by C. S. Harris
Beresford’s face hardened in a way that made him look considerably older—and less gentle. “If you’re asking if that man was I, the answer is no. I already told you that.”
“So you did. Then tell me this: When was the last time you saw Eisler?”
“The Saturday before he died.”
The readiness of the man’s answer took Sebastian by surprise. “Was that the last time you provided him with a woman?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I saw him here.”
“Here?” Sebastian wasn’t certain he’d understood right. “At Portland Chapel?”
“That’s right.”
Sebastian stared out over the rows of graying, moss-covered tombstones. The chapel was less than a century old, and already the churchyard was filled to overflowing. He said, “When was this?”
“Late Saturday afternoon.”
“What was he doing here?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“I did. I hadn’t intended to, but he approached me. Accused me of following him. If you ask me, he’d been drinking. He was talking wild—said he knew ‘they’ were watching him. He even accused me of working for ‘them.’ But when I asked who ‘they’ were, he just started ranting about some Frenchman named Collot.”
“Jacques Collot?” asked Sebastian sharply. “What about Collot?”
“I told you, the old goat was obviously foxed. He was practically raving. Nothing he said made much sense. He said it was all Collot’s fault.”
“What was Collot’s fault?”
Beresford shrugged. “I assumed he meant the fact that someone was watching him. I don’t really know—I tell you, he was as drunk as a wheelbarrow.”
The wind gusted up again, scuttling dead leaves across the overgrown path and ruffling the younger man’s soft golden curls. After a moment, Beresford said, “Look . . . I know you think I killed him, but I didn’t. I’m not saying I didn’t want to. To be frank, I even thought about it a few times—about how I could maybe do it. But I’m too much of a coward to ever go through with something like that.” His features twisted with what looked very much like self-loathing. “I let that little piece of human excrement use me as a tool to satisfy his sick carnal urgings. He talked to me like I was filth. Threatened me. And I took it. Because I was too weak and afraid to do anything about it.”
“Sometimes admitting that you’ve been weak takes more courage than walking into a man’s house and putting a bullet in his chest.”
Beresford gave a mirthless laugh and shook his head. “No.” Then his features sharpened.
“What?” asked Sebastian, watching him.
“I was just remembering something else Eisler said—about that Frenchman, Collot.”
“What about him?”
“He said he had a big mouth.”
Darkness was just beginning to fall, the last of the light leaching from the sky as Sebastian walked the narrow streets and alleys of St. Giles looking for Jacques Collot. The reek of newly lit tallow candles and torches filled the air, mingling with the smell of roasting mutton and spilled ale and cheap gin.
He tried the Pilgrim first, then a string of ale shops along Queen Street, then the tavern where he’d spotted the Frenchman in consultation with his three confederates.
Nothing.
He was passing the smoke-blackened ruins of what looked like an old coaching inn when a low, anxious voice hissed at him from out of the darkness.
“Pssst.”
Sebastian turned to find Collot hovering in the shadows of the burned inn’s scorched, refuse-filled arch. He had his hat brim pulled low over his forehead and the collar of his greatcoat turned up, although it was not cold.
“Why are you hiding in the shadows?” asked Sebastian, walking up to him—but not too close.
“Why? Because I am nervous! Why do you think?” He cast a quick, harried glance around. “Many people are looking for me, asking about me. Why are you stirring up trouble by looking for me again?”
Sebastian stared through the arch at the abandoned yard beyond. It appeared deserted, its piles of blackened timbers and rubble standing quiet and still in the deepening darkness. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“The last time you talked to me, you ripped my coat. See? Look here.” He turned sideways to display a large rent down one shoulder.
“My apologies,” said Sebastian. “I want to know how you discovered that Eisler had in his possession a certain big blue diamond.”
“Why should I tell you? Hmm? Give me one reason why I should tell you.”
“To save your coat?”
Collot’s wayward eye rolled sideways. “I am a man with many contacts. I hear many things. Who can say where I learn things?”
“I suspect you could say where.” Sebastian showed his teeth in a smile. “If the alternative becomes unpleasant enough.”
“Monsieur.” Collot threw up his hands like a man warding off evil. “Surely this is unnecessary.”
“How did you discover Eisler had the diamond?”
“He showed it to a woman I know. A putain. She told me.”
“A whore? Why would Eisler show a priceless gem to a woman off the streets?”
“Why? Because he was a sick salaud; that is why.” Collot hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and turned his head to spit. “You would not believe some of the things I could tell you.”
“Try me.”
But Collot only shook his head.
Sebastian said, “How did Eisler find out you knew about the diamond?”
“What makes you think that he did?”
Sebastian smiled. “You’re not the only one who hears things.”
Collot sniffed. “He knew because I wanted him to know. He cheated me, you see—in Amsterdam. It might have been twenty years ago, but Collot does not forget these things. I brought him my share of the gems from the Garde-Meuble. We agreed on a price. Then, after I handed them over, he paid me a third of what he had promised. Said if I set up a squawk, he would tell the authorities I had tried to rob him. He was a respected merchant; I was a known thief. What could I do? He said I was lucky he had given me anything at all for the jewels. I should have killed him right there.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Collot squared his shoulders with a strange kind of pride. “I am a thief, not a murderer.”
“So what did you hope to accomplish by going to him now, after all these years?”
“I told him I wanted the rest of the money he owed me, and that if he did not give it to me, I would tell the French he had the diamant bleu de la Couronne.”
Sebastian was aware of a burst of laughter from the throng of drunken men in the street behind him. The last of the light had vanished from the evening sky, leaving the narrow lane dark and windswept. “And? What did he say?”
“The old bastard laughed at me. He laughed! Then his face changed, and suddenly he was shaking with rage. It was as if he had been possessed by a demon. He said if I ever thought of breathing a word to Napoléon’s agents, he would see me buried alive in an unmarked grave. Who talks like that? Hmm?”
“When was this?”
“Friday.”
“So what did you do?”
Collot rolled his shoulders in an expansive Gallic shrug. “I told.”
“Who? Who did you tell?”
“Why, the agent of Napoléon, of course. Who else? Eisler did not think I would do it. He did not believe I would have the courage. But I did. He should never have said those things to me.”
Sebastian studied the Parisian thief’s mobile, beard-shadowed face. “Are you telling me that you know the identity of one of Napoléon’s agents in London?”
Collot’s elastic mouth curved into a grin. “Like I said, I know things.”
“So who is it?”
The old thief gave a deep, husky laugh. “Believe me, you do not want to know.”
“But I do.”
Collot shook his
head, his smile still wide, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “I could tell you it is someone you know. More than that: It is someone you trust.” He laughed out loud. “But I won’t.”
Sebastian resisted the urge to grab the man and shake him. “Tell me this: Were you handsomely compensated for your information?”
Collot’s face fell.
“No?” said Sebastian, watching him. “Why not?”
“They said they already knew. They said they had known for weeks.”
Sebastian was aware of a dark carriage being driven slowly up the street. He said, “You do realize that they are probably the ones watching you? They killed Eisler, and now they’re going to kill you.”
“Non.”
“Yes. Tell me who they are.”
“Non.” Collot started to back away, his head shaking from side to side, his wayward eye going wild. “You are trying to get me killed! What do you take me for? A f—” He broke off, his expressive face going slack with shock as the explosive crack of a rifle echoed in the narrow street and the front of his coat dissolved into a pulpy sheen.
“God damn it!” swore Sebastian, barreling the crumpling French-
man deep into the fetid, protective darkness of the old archway. He caught the man’s falling body beneath the arms, propping him upright so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood. But it was already too late.
He saw Collot’s eyes roll back into his head, heard the rattle in his throat, felt the essence of his life ease away, leaving Sebastian holding a silent, empty husk that seemed to collapse and diminish before his eyes.
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 br
andy 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 thousand 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.”
