by C. S. Harris
“Whose house?”
The man flattened his hands against the brick wall behind him, his stringy muscles tense, his fingers splayed. Then he opened his eyes, and they were like the eyes of a child or of the very old, when the mind begins to lose its ability to comprehend and simply stares out at the world in helpless confusion and need. “Oh, I can’t tell you that.”
Sebastian took a step back and let the man go. “You stay away from my wife. Is that understood? You stay away from my house, and you stay away from my wife. I see you hanging around here again, I’ll have you taken up by the watch.”
He realized the man was no longer looking at him but at something beyond him. Turning, Sebastian saw Hero calmly crossing the street toward him, the hem of her delicate white muslin gown lifted above the mud- and manure-strewn paving.
When Sebastian looked back, the man was gone.
“So, who is he?” Hero asked, her gaze following the skinny man’s retreating figure as she stepped up onto the flagway beside him. A gust of wind blew the rain in stinging, swirling sheets around them.
“Someone who belongs in Bedlam.”
She brought her gaze back to Sebastian. “Oh? You mean like a man who charges out into the rain with neither hat nor cloak?”
He swiped the water out of his eyes and looked at his wife. Rain dripped from her wet hair, ran down her cheeks, soaked the wet muslin of her elegant gown so that it clung to every swell and hollow of her magnificent body. He said, “You mean like you?”
Her face lit up with surprised delight and she let out a peal of laughter that tilted her head up to the sky.
The rain eased up later that evening, only to sweep back in just after midnight.
Lying awake in his wife’s bed, Sebastian could see streaks of strange green lightning illuminating the churning clouds that pressed low over the fetid alleyways and rain-lashed docks to the east. There came a moment’s breath-stealing pause; then the rumble of the thunder began, building louder and louder into a window-rattling crescendo that bled seamlessly into memories he would rather have forgotten.
He sensed a subtle shift beside him, heard a whisper of movement. A soft, warm hand crept across the bare flesh of his chest. Hero said, “You’re not sleeping.”
He smiled into the darkness. “And you are?”
She rolled over to press her long body against his side as he brought his arms down to gather her to him.
She said, “You’re worried about that man, the one who was watching the house.”
He stroked his hand down her back and over the swell of her hip. “I keep thinking I’ve seen him before, only I can’t place where.”
“A beggar on a street corner, perhaps? A face glimpsed in the desperate crowds outside St. Martin’s poorhouse?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t think he’s a beggar.”
“You said yourself he sounds as if he belongs in Bedlam.”
“That doesn’t mean he isn’t somehow involved in Daniel Eisler’s death.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Why was he here, now, watching the house? Watching you? Not me. You.”
She propped herself up on one elbow so she could look down at him. “I can take care of myself.”
Her words echoed those Kat had said to him earlier that day. Only, in that instance she had been referring to the threat posed by Jarvis. . Hero’s own father.
He caught the dark fall of hair curtaining her face and swept it back with his splayed fingers. He had seen her shoot a man point-blank in the chest and barely register any reaction, either horror or remorse. There was a hard edge to this woman that he knew came to her from her father, Jarvis. It was leavened by her sense of justice and a measure of compassion for the suffering of those less fortunate that Jarvis had never experienced. But Sebastian knew she could still kill without hesitation or compunction to protect herself or others, just as he knew that none of that might be enough to keep her safe.
He said, “We’re all vulnerable. Especially when dealing with a madman.”
She was silent a moment, her face solemn, a frown digging a furrow between her eyebrows. “Do you think I don’t worry about you?”
“That’s not-”
“Not the same? Because you are a man and I am a woman?”
“No. Because it’s one thing for me to make the choice to put my own life in danger and something else entirely when my actions endanger someone else.”
She touched her fingers to his lips. “I knew what I was letting myself in for when I married you, Devlin.”
He smiled against her hand. “I’m not sure I did.” It was the closest he’d ever come to speaking of the profound shifts in their relationship and the unexpected, life-altering deepening of the ties that bound them.
She let her hand slide down his chest, down over the tender flesh of his belly. His breath caught, and he saw her eyes darken with want.
He rolled her onto her back, rising above her. The wind drove the rain against the windowpanes. The green glow of the lightning flickered in ethereal pulses around them. He kissed her cheek, her eyelids, her hair, the delicate hollow at the base of her throat. His world narrowed down to the rasp of flesh against flesh, hands reaching, fingers clenching. The softness of her lips. The whispered urgency of her desire.
And his.
Sebastian was easing his breeches up over his hips when he became aware of Hero coming to stand in the doorway of his darkened dressing room. She’d drawn a blanket over her shoulders against the chill, but otherwise she was naked, her body long and pale, her rounded belly silhouetted against the throbbing electric light of the storm.
She said, “I suppose there’s a good reason you’re sneaking away from my bed at one in the morning.”
He smiled and pulled a shirt over his head. “I want to have another look at Eisler’s house-alone, and with no interruptions.”
“Unless someone interrupts your housebreaking with a blunderbuss.”
“Do you think me so careless?”
“No. But you didn’t get any sleep last night. You need to rest, Devlin.”
He bent to pull on his boots. “How much rest do you suppose Russell Yates is getting tonight?”
“There will always be innocent men in danger of being hanged.”
He knotted a casual kerchief around his neck and reached for his coat. “True.”
“You said the doors were bolted and the windows barred. So how will you get in?”
“I’ve an idea.”
“Well, it’s reassuring to know that should we ever find ourselves in dire straits, you could make a credible living as a burglar.”
He grunted and caught her to him for a quick kiss, but she surprised him by holding him close and hard.
She said, “You’ll be careful.” In typical Hero fashion, it was more of a command than a request.
He kissed her again, on her nose. “Good God. You sound just like a wife.”
“Don’t be insulting.” She adjusted the set of his hat. “What exactly do you expect to find?”
“Answers, hopefully.”
“To precisely which questions?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
Chapter 19
A single oil lamp mounted high on the wall of the corner greengrocer’s shop cast a small, murky puddle of light. But the rest of the crooked lane lay still and quiet in the wet darkness.
Pausing in the shadow of a recessed doorway that smelled strongly of urine, Sebastian watched as the gusting wind ruffled the rain-drenched ivy that draped the scarred stone facade of Eisler’s house and half obscured the ancient leaded windows. Like the warehouses and shuttered shops around it, the house was dark. He had no way of knowing if the aged retainers employed by Eisler were still in residence, but if so, they would long ago have retired to their attic bedchamber for the night. Casting a quick glance around, he crossed the street to duck down the narrow, malodorous passageway that ran along the south side of t
he house.
Vennels, he’d heard them called in Scotland and the north of England. This one was barely wide enough for a man turned sideways and terminated in an old gate made of thick, vertical planks studded with clavos and hinged with iron straps. But the wood was crumbling with rot, the rusted mountings flaking and so thin they snapped easily when Sebastian leaned his weight against the boards. He caught the gate before it could clatter onto the weed- and leaf-strewn paving and set it carefully to one side.
What must once, two hundred years or more earlier, have been a delightful Renaissance garden of rose-shaded walks bordering parterres of comfrey and chamomile, tansy and feverfew, was now a dark, overgrown tangle hemmed in by the looming, grimy brick walls of its neighbors. Massive elms, their spreading limbs heavy with rain, had grown up near the terrace. Any other man would have been blind. But Sebastian moved easily, picking his way over downed rotting branches, tangled wet vines, and broken masonry.
It was a gift, his mother had told him, this catlike ability to see clearly in all but the complete absence of any light, to hear sounds too subtle or high-pitched for most human ears. The trait was shared by no one else in his family, and he still remembered the look on his mother’s face when she first discovered the strange, almost animalistic quality of his senses.
She’d come upon him unexpectedly one evening, when he was curled up on a bench in the summerhouse reading a book long after the sun had set. He realized now that she had surely known then, even if Sebastian himself had not, that this gift came to him from his father. .
The father who was not the Earl of Hendon.
He pushed the memory from his thoughts and quietly mounted the shattered steps to the terrace, stepping carefully to avoid the telltale clatter of broken stones shifting beneath his boots. The rows of ratty wooden cages were still there to the left of the door, their forlorn feathered occupants huddled against a damp wind that carried with it a foul stench of neglect and misery. Nearly every food bowl was empty, the water vessels scummed.
Moving purposefully from cage to cage, he quickly unlatched one door after the other, rattling the slats of those whose occupants appeared too weakened or morose to seize the freedom offered them. In a whirl of wings, they rose against the night sky, first sparrows, doves, and larks; then, once the smaller birds had flown to safety, the goshawks and owls. Sebastian stood at last before the cage of the disgruntled, long-haired black cat, which looked up at him with slitted green eyes. Sebastian swung open the cage door, its hinges squealing loud enough to make him wince.
“Well, go on, then,” he whispered when the cat remained motionless. “What are you waiting for? An invitation from the King?”
The cat blinked.
Sebastian tipped the cage forward, upending the cat, which dropped lightly onto the pavement beside him with an indignant yowl.
“Shhh,” hissed Sebastian.
The cat streaked into the night, its ridiculously long, bushy tail lashing back and forth.
Sebastian watched it for a moment, ears straining for any sound that might indicate that his presence had been detected. The wind gusted up again, thrashing the creaking limbs of the old elms.
He eased the knife from his boot and crossed to the back door.
The gap between the door and its frame was not as wide as he’d hoped, but it was enough. Slipping the blade through the opening close against the frame, he pressed down until the hard steel of the knife sank into the softer iron of the bolt with enough purchase to enable him to slide the bolt a fraction to the right. Then he freed the blade, eased it in close to the frame again, and pressed down.
He did this again and again, working the bolt back bit by bit. The work was excruciatingly slow. It would have been much easier to simply knock out the bars on one of the windows and break the glass, but he preferred to leave as little sign of his entry as possible. He was aware of a soft patter as the rain started up again, and the distant cry of the watch shouting, “Two o’clock on a rainy night and all is well.” Then the bolt cleared the frame with a soft click, and the door creaked inward perhaps six inches.
Sebastian pushed it open wider, took a step, and nearly tripped as something warm and furry threaded between his legs.
“Will you go away?” he whispered.
The cat let out a soft mew.
Bloody hell.
Slipping the knife back into its sheath, Sebastian stepped over the cat, then quickly shut the door in its face.
“Meow,” complained the cat, caught on the outside.
With the door closed, the corridor lay in near total darkness, the only illumination a faint glow that spilled through the archway from the windows of the vast hall beyond. The rows of heavy paintings on the walls and stacks of fine furniture loomed out of heavy shadows. The smell of mold and rot hung thick in the air.
Moving quietly, he opened the first door to his right and found himself staring at a dining room that looked as if it hadn’t been used for its intended purpose in decades. The velvet curtains at the windows hung in tatters; a long Jacobean table and a dozen chairs with barley-turned legs, so darkened by centuries of smoke and old wax as to be nearly black, stood in the center of the room. All were so buried beneath piles of furniture and stacks of paintings and objets d’art that it would take a man a week to search the room, clearing a path for himself as he went.
Closing the door, Sebastian turned to the opposite side of the corridor, only to draw up short at the sight of a pair of green eyes gleaming at him from out of the darkness.
“How the devil did you get in here?” he whispered to the cat. Then a waft of wind scented by wet pavement and sodden earth caused the heavy door from the terrace to shift with a loud creak, and he realized that, without the bolt, it had swung open again.
He used his boot to nudge the cat out of his way. “Just be quiet, will you?”
The next door opened to reveal a chamber only slightly less cluttered than the dining room, although this space was obviously used for more than storage, for there was a clear path from the door to a beautiful ebony desk inlaid with ivory and piled high with papers. From the looks of things, someone had been going through them-no doubt Eisler’s heirs or their solicitors. Beyond the desk stood a massive safe, its heavy iron door hanging open, its shelves empty. Whatever gems, stacks of currency, and other secrets it might once have contained were now gone.
He moved on.
As he had suspected, the next door proved to be a second entrance to the long parlor where Eisler had been shot. This, obviously, was how the murderer had managed to flee the house without being seen by Yates. . if Yates was telling the truth about what had happened that night.
It bothered Sebastian that he was not as convinced of that as he would like to have been.
There remained only one more door on this floor, not far from where the set of narrow steps led down to the basement kitchen. Crossing back across the corridor, he pressed down on the door latch.
It was locked.
At his feet, the black cat settled on its haunches and let out a soft mew.
“Yes, it is puzzling, isn’t it?” Sebastian said to the cat. “But I wish you would-”
He broke off as a muffled thump sounded from below.
Sebastian drew back from the top of the stairs, his spine pressed against the wall, the dagger from his boot in his hand. A faint glow, as if from a lantern, illuminated the stairwell leading up from the basement and threw the long shadows of two men across the far wall. A heavy footstep sounded on the stairs, then another.
“Meow,” went the cat.
The footsteps stopped.
“Meow.” Stretching to its feet, the cat arched its back and went to stand at the top of the stairs, its enormous fluffy tail lashing back and forth, green eyes glinting in the darkness.
“What in the name of all that’s ’oly is that?” demanded one of the men in a frightened whisper.
The second man answered, his voice older, harsher. “It’s a cat
, you damn fool.” Sebastian heard a whacking sound, as if the older man had walloped his companion with his hat.
“Ow. What was that for?”
“Jist shut up and keep goin’.”
The footsteps resumed their cautious ascent.
Sebastian eased sideways deeper into the shadows cast by the open stair door and a massive bureau piled high with everything from a marble bust and Grecian urn to a jumble of elegant walking sticks. But there was no place to hide, and he couldn’t cross in front of the stairs or even slide back toward the dining room without moving into the men’s line of vision.
“Where do we look first?” whispered the younger man, his voice cracking with nerves.
“The parlor, I should think,” answered his companion.
“And if we don’t find it there?”
“Then we go through every bleedin’ room in the house till we do find it. What do ye think? Ye want to be the one to tell the gov’nor we failed?”
“No. But. .” The footsteps halted again. “Morgan?”
“What? Now what are ye stoppin’ for?”
“Why’s the back door standin’ open?”
Sebastian could see the first housebreaker now. A tall, skinny lad dressed in a brown corduroy coat and baggy trousers, he held a shuttered horn lantern in one clenched fist, the muted light glowing golden on the smooth, unlined features of a youth probably no more than sixteen or eighteen. His gaze riveted on the open back door, he swallowed heavily, the movement visibly bobbing his Adam’s apple up and down. The lantern light quivered as his hand shook.
“What the ’ell?” said the older man, pausing on the step behind him.
“Ye think maybe the wind blew it open?”
“How the ’ell would I know? Go look.”
“Give me the pistol.”
“Why? Ye think Rawhead and Bloodybones are gonna git ye?”
“Stop laughin’ at me and jist give me the pistol.”
The older man grumbled but handed over a heavy horse pistol that looked like a relic of the Thirty Years’ War.
