by C. S. Harris
“You recognized him?”
She nodded again. “Immediately. He was older than the young man I remembered and dressed like a tradesman, but the instant I saw him, I couldn’t look away. It was as if all the noise and color of the square faded and there were only the two of us.” She paused as if vaguely embarrassed by what she had just said. “I realize how fanciful that sounds.”
“No, please—” Hero’s throat suddenly felt so tight, she had to work to push out the words. “Go on.”
Kate’s voice was hushed, her chest jerking with each strained intake of air. “For a moment, I couldn’t look away. Then I remembered Sir Lindsey was beside me and I was terrified lest he turn and see Nicholas too.”
“Did he?”
“No.” She paused as if reconsidering this. “At least, I don’t think he did. Nicholas told me afterward that he hadn’t intended to approach me, that he was simply hoping to catch a glimpse of me from a distance. He hadn’t meant for me to see him.”
“But he did approach you?”
“Yes. Four days later. I was with my maid Molly at Hatchards, in Piccadilly. We spoke for only a few moments, but arranged to meet again. Someplace private.”
“Where?” said Hero, sharper than she’d intended. “Where were you to meet?”
Kate swallowed. “In Pennington’s Tea Gardens, on Thursday evening.”
“Dear Lord,” whispered Hero. “That’s why he went there.”
Kate pressed her lips together and nodded. “I knew Sir Lindsey would be busy with all the events surrounding the Allied Sovereigns’ visit. When the day came, I told him I wasn’t well and had decided to stay home. He was furious, of course—he likes having a wife with him at such events.” She said it as if any wife would have sufficed as long as she was attractive and presentable enough for Sir Lindsey to consider her an asset, and Hero suspected that was true enough. “But for once I didn’t give in to him. He grumbled, but in the end he went alone.”
For once I didn’t give in to him, thought Hero. What a miserable marriage. Aloud, she said, “You were with Nicholas in the gardens that night?”
“No. Just as I was about to leave the house, one of the kitchen maids scalded her arm quite badly. I had to deal with it, and it took so long that by the time I reached Pennington’s Gardens, they were closing.” Her face had acquired a pinched, haunted look. “All I could do was sit in the hackney and watch the stream of happy, laughing people leaving the gardens. I kept hoping I’d see Nicholas, but he never came.” She swallowed convulsively and bowed her head. “I was devastated. I was certain he must be thinking that I’d changed my mind, that I’d decided I didn’t want to see him after all. But by then he was already dead, wasn’t he?”
“Did you see anyone you recognized in the crowd?”
Her head came up, and it was obvious from the consternation in her face that it had never occurred to her that she might unknowingly have seen Nicholas’s killer. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“And then you went home?”
“Yes. I had the hackney stop by the apothecary’s so I could pick up a headache powder on the way. That was the excuse I’d given for going out, you see—and my explanation for having the footman call a hackney rather than go through all the bother of having the horses put to and the carriage brought ’round. Of course, I was gone a ridiculously long time for such a simple errand, and I could have sent one of the servants for it in the first place. But I didn’t expect anyone to inquire too closely. I mean, why would they?”
Why indeed? thought Hero. Servants were accustomed to accepting their employers’ little prevarications and obvious outright lies without a blink. “Did Nicholas have a child with him when you saw him—a little boy of perhaps eight or nine?”
“Not when I spoke with him in Piccadilly—or at any rate, I didn’t see the boy then. But I remember there was a child who seemed to be with him in the square. A pretty boy, with very dark hair.” She paused. “Why? Who is he?”
“His name is Ji. We don’t know for certain what his relationship is to Nicholas Hayes, but the two came together from China.”
“Is that where Nicholas has been? In China?”
“Yes. He didn’t tell you?”
“No. But we spoke so briefly. I was afraid someone might see us. Where is the child now?”
“We don’t know. He disappeared after Nicholas was killed. I saw him yesterday morning, but some men tried to grab him, and he ran off again.”
“Good heavens. Who would want to hurt a child?”
“Lord Seaforth, actually. He was afraid the boy might be Nicholas’s legitimate heir, and thus able to challenge the succession.”
Kate stared at her. “And is he? Nicholas’s child, I mean.”
“I think he probably is.”
Kate was silent, and Hero had the impression that all of her focus, all of her thoughts, had been drawn into herself. Eighteen years before, this woman had given birth to Nicholas Hayes’s child—her only child, a child who had died. Hero wondered how such a woman would react to the discovery that the man she’d once loved so desperately had fathered a child by another. But with Kate, such things were almost impossible to discern.
Hero said, “Nicholas didn’t say anything to you about the boy?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything—anything at all that might help explain his murder?”
“No. As I said, we spoke for only a moment or two.”
“Can you tell me what he said? It might help.”
Kate nodded, the skin of her face tight, the struggle to maintain her composure so obvious as to hardly be worth the effort. “When he first walked up to me in Hatchards, I said something like, ‘Dear Lord, it really is you.’ I think by then I had somehow managed to convince myself that I must have imagined seeing him. I said, ‘What are you doing in England? If they find you, they’ll kill you.’” She paused.
“And?” prodded Hero.
“And he said, ‘I know. It doesn’t matter.’ I remember I was suddenly furious with him. I said, ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? It matters to me.’ And then he smiled this strange, crooked smile and said, ‘You still care? Even if it’s just a little?’” She paused again, her gaze dropping to where her fingers were playing aimlessly with the strings of her reticule.
It was a long moment before she could go on. “He said . . . he said, ‘You still care?’ and I told him I’d loved him with every breath I’ve taken for more than nineteen years.” She looked suddenly fierce, a challenge in her eyes when she glanced up as if daring Hero to judge her.
When Hero remained silent, Kate said, “I told him it was madness for us to be talking like that where anyone might see us. And then I suggested we meet at the tea gardens, because no one fashionable goes there anymore. I remembered there used to be a small clearing in the shrubbery, with a bench, near the access gate in the western wall. . . .”
Her voice trailed away, and in the silent, wounded depths of her gentle blue eyes, Hero could see hints of a pain and a heartache that would never go away.
Hero said, “Was anyone close enough that they might have heard you?”
Kate looked at her blankly. “I don’t believe so, but . . . Dear heaven, do you think it’s possible?”
“Perhaps,” said Hero as gently as she could. But there was no way to soften this woman’s realization that their planned meeting might somehow have inadvertently contributed to the death of the man she’d loved for so long. “Did he say anything else? Anything at all?”
Kate gazed out the open windows. The flat morning light was soaking the upper stories of the row of houses across the street and turning the small visible slice of sky an almost brilliant white. Then suddenly everything darkened, as if a heavier cloud had passed over the sun. “I don’t think so. Except . . .”
“Yes?”
She frowned with the effort of memory. “I don’t recall his exact words, but he said there was something he wanted to ask me. I said, ‘Ask. Ask me anything,’ and he smiled in a way that made him look so much like the boy he once was that it . . . it hurt. He said, ‘You don’t even know what it is yet,’ and I told him I didn’t care. Then the smile went out of his eyes and he said, ‘I thought I could count on Anne, but she let me down.’”
Hero sat forward. “Anne? Do you think he meant his sister, Lady Bradbury?”
“I assumed so. Why do you say it like that?”
“Because Lady Bradbury told Devlin she had no idea her brother was in England. She said she hadn’t seen him since their father banished him nineteen years ago.”
Chapter 51
T hursday’s schedule of events for the entertainment of the visiting Allied Sovereigns included a dinner to be hosted by Lord Castlereagh, a visit to Drury Lane Theatre, and a ball at the home of the Marchioness of Hertford. But for those dignitaries unfazed by their recent lightning trip to Oxford and looking for a diversion earlier in the day, the palace had arranged for them to view the annual charity children’s procession and service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Sebastian arrived at St. Paul’s to find the sky above white with thin, high clouds and the air warm and humid. Somewhere a band was playing, although the musicians struggled to compete with the wind’s noisy snapping of the banners carried by each of the various charitable institutions.
Lady Bradbury was standing near the cathedral steps in a section reserved for people of quality. She wore a green sarcenet walking dress with bunches of yellow ribbons on the tucked sleeves and an enormously wide-brimmed bonnet of the type popularized by the Tsar’s sister the Duchess of Oldenburg. When Sebastian walked up to her, she was clapping politely, a vaguely bored smile plastered on her face as she watched the endless parade of carefully scrubbed and neatened-up pauper children.
She cast him a quick glance, then said in a smug, self-congratulatory tone, “It’s an uplifting sight, is it not? A grand tradition that honors our rich heritage of British benevolence.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
She gave a polite titter. “Is there any other?”
Rather than answer, he said, “I know about your meeting with Nicholas.”
Her hands froze midclap, her eyeballs swiveling sideways. She recovered almost immediately, that fixed air of amused condescension never slipping. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
A pretty child in a sashed dress stepped forward to recite a short, breathy speech no one could hear before presenting three posies to the Lord Mayor, the Tsar of Russia, and the Prussian King.
Lady Anne clapped again. “This is hardly the place for such a discussion.”
“Then walk apart with me. I doubt anyone will either notice or complain.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“If you are counting on me to either be quiet or go away, I fear you are doomed to disappointment.”
She hesitated, her lips flattening into a thin, unattractive line. Then she turned and stalked off toward Ludgate Street, her head held high.
Sebastian fell into step beside her. He thought she might continue to deny having seen her brother, but she obviously thought he knew more about the meeting than he did. She said, “Do I take it you think I should have informed the authorities?”
“Not at all. Although I must admit I’m surprised you didn’t.”
She looked beyond him, her attention seemingly all for the next troop of charity children filling the narrow street, banner waving. “And deliberately provoke the kind of wretched scandal I’ve been forced to endure for the past week? Why would I?”
“Ah. So that’s why,” said Sebastian in a way that caused her ladyship’s eyebrows first to lift, then to draw together in a frown. “Is that the same reason you refused to honor your brother’s request?”
She huffed a scornful sound that was not a laugh. “As if I would take his grubby little foreign-born by-blow into my home.”
Sebastian stared at her, at the tilt of her chin and the still faintly curling line of her lips. “Nicholas asked you to take care of his child?”
“Yes. Can you believe it?”
“So the child is illegitimate? Are you certain?”
“I assumed it must be, although I don’t believe he actually said. He wanted to introduce me to her, but naturally I refused.”
“Her?” For a moment, it was as if the off-tune band, the jostling children, the cheering crowd all faded into a haze. “Are you telling me the child is a girl?”
“That’s what he said. Obviously I don’t know for certain, but why would he lie? Di is her name, or Gi, or some such outlandish thing. I believe he said she was twelve, but needless to say I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention.”
“Twelve?” Sebastian found everything he thought he’d known about the missing child spin around and realign itself to create a different picture. He thought about the child he’d glimpsed so briefly standing beside that lamppost in Brook Street, and realized that instead of a nine- or ten-year-old boy, he’d actually been looking at a small, fine-boned twelve-year-old girl with cropped hair. “What else did he say about her?”
Lady Bradbury gave a high, ringing laugh. “He was at pains to impress upon me that she’s intelligent, well educated, and well mannered, and that her English is perfect. As if that would make any difference.”
Sebastian looked at this woman’s hot, flushed face and saw the petty, all-consuming nature of her self-regard, the self-absorption that defined everything and everyone by its impact on her. He said, “Did Nicholas tell you he was dying of consumption?”
“He did, yes. He said that was why he’d come back to England, because he was dying and he was hoping I would agree to take care of the girl after he was gone. Can you believe it?”
Sebastian found he had to look away from her, to the street filled with endless thousands of orphaned pauper children. “What do you find so unbelievable? That he would risk giving up the few remaining months of his life to try to provide for his child? Or that he had such misplaced faith in his only sister’s goodness?”
Two splotches of color appeared high on her ladyship’s cheeks. “Nicholas forfeited any claims he might have had on his family nineteen years ago.”
“And what about his child? What about your niece’s claims?”
Lady Anne gazed at him with righteous, scandalized horror. “She’s Chinese.”
“And therefore means nothing to you?”
Her ladyship drew up abruptly and turned to stare back at the Cathedral. “This is a preposterous conversation.”
“One more thing: Did Nicholas say anything else—anything at all—that might shed some light on his murder?”
“I don’t think so. I was frankly appalled to see him and stunned by his request. I cut off our interview as quickly as possible and left.”
“Where did you see him?”
“He accosted me last Sunday as I was leaving church, of all places. I was beyond mortified. What if someone had seen us talking and recognized him?”
“Perish the thought. Did anyone see him?”
“No, thankfully.”
“You’re certain?”
“Reasonably so, yes. Obviously, I was concerned.”
“Did you tell anyone you’d seen him?”
“Seriously? As if I would.”
“No, of course not.” Sebastian touched his hand to his hat with only the vaguest of polite bows. “Thank you for your time, Lady Bradbury.”
He was turning away when she reached out unexpectedly with one elegantly gloved hand to touch his arm. “You won’t—you won’t tell anyone I spoke to him, will you?”
He studied her thin, crimped mouth.
“What worries you more? The possibility that someone might find you lacking in common decency and humanity? Or the fear that people might mistakenly believe you actually loved your own brother?”
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. Then she turned to walk back toward the Cathedral, the yellow silk ribbons on her pin-tucked sleeves fluttering in the wind.
* * *
“So that’s why Nicholas came back,” said Hero later that afternoon. They were seated on the terrace overlooking the house’s rear gardens with Simon and the big, arrogant black cat named Mr. Darcy at their feet. It was still hot, but the clouds overhead were becoming thicker and darker, the light more diffuse. “He didn’t come back to kill Seaforth or LaRivière or even Forbes, but because he was dying and he hoped his sister would agree to take care of his daughter after he was gone.”
Devlin stared out over the gardens, at the neatly edged parterres banked by more natural shrubbery bending now with the growing wind. They could hear a horse neighing in a nearby stable and a hawker out on the street shouting his wares. “Mahmoud Abbasi told me that Nicholas was no longer the hot-tempered man he’d been when young—that he’d studied the teachings of Buddhism and was one of the most calm and controlled men Abbasi had ever met. But I didn’t pay enough attention . . . or perhaps I didn’t believe it enough to think everything through the way I should have. A man like that wouldn’t dedicate the last remaining months of his life to exacting revenge on those who’d harmed him in the past. His thoughts would all be for his child. His daughter.” Abbasi had also told Sebastian about a girl child, he realized. A girl who would now be about twelve. But they’d both simply assumed the child must have died.
A lizard paused at the edge of the flagstone paving, head up and alert as it attracted the attention of both the cat and the baby. Hero said, “Why put Ji in breeches? Why cut her hair and make everyone think she’s a boy?”
