Sebastien St. Cyr 08 - What Darkness Brings

by C. S. Harris

Knox nodded. “You remember when you promised that if you ever discovered I shot that French lieutenant, you’d see me hang?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ll understand when I say that if I find out you did kill Foy, you’re a dead man.”

  Knox started to turn away.

  Sebastian said, “I didn’t realize Foy was a friend of yours.”

  Knox paused to look back at him. “He wasn’t. Bloody hell, the man was crazy.”

  Sebastian started to laugh. And after a moment, Knox joined him.

  Sebastian walked into the house, poured himself a glass of burgundy, and went to stand staring thoughtfully out the dining room window at the black cat, who was lying on the top step of the terrace, fastidiously engaged in the never-ending task of bathing its long, silky fur. An idea was forming in his mind, a suspicion borne of a series of subtle inconsistencies and improbabilities almost too amorphous to name.

  He drained his wine and sent for Jules Calhoun.

  “What can you tell me about Bertram Leigh-Jones?” he asked when the valet appeared.

  The valet looked vaguely surprised. “You mean the chief magistrate at Lambeth Street Public Office?”

  “I do, yes.”

  Calhoun opened his eyes wide and blew out a long breath. “Well, he’s a piece of work, no doubt about that.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He runs that district like it’s his own private fiefdom. Makes the publicans give him a cut if they want to be certain he’ll renew their licenses. And I suspect his handling of the vestry’s poor fund wouldn’t bear too close an inspection either.”

  “In other words, he’s not exactly what one might call an honest man.”

  “Actually, I’d say he’s fairly typical of East End magistrates.”

  “Someone from Lambeth Street seems suddenly to have been moved to interview the woman at the greengrocer’s on the corner of Fountain Lane. I’d be interested to know when that conversation took place.”

  “I’ll see what I can discover, my lord.”

  Sebastian nodded. “Just be careful. This is a magistrate who thinks hanging half a dozen men before breakfast is good sport.”

  Chapter 51

  T

  hat night, as Kat prepared to leave for the theater, a heavy fog rolled up from the river, swallowing the city in a thick white mist.

  She was in the hall, easing the hood of her cloak up over her hair, when Yates appeared in the doorway from the library, a glass of brandy held in one hand. He’d been drinking steadily since his release from Newgate, although Kat couldn’t say she blamed him.

  “I think perhaps it would be best if I were to ride with you in the carriage tonight,” he said.

  “Good heavens, why?”

  He met her gaze and held it. “You know why.”

  She gave a soft laugh that sounded forced even to her own ears. “I’ve never heard of anyone holding up a carriage on the streets of London, if that’s what concerns you.”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  “If it comes to that, I’ve a footman and a coachman to protect me.”

  He drained his glass and set it aside. “Humor me?”

  She smiled, a genuine smile this time. “All right.”

  They drove through streets shrouded in white and unusually light in traffic. Yates said, “Devlin tells me he intends to continue his pursuit of Eisler’s killer.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “In a way it does, yes. Eisler was a vile excuse for a human being. What does it matter who killed him? The world is well rid of him.”

  “Perhaps. Yet more people are now dying.”

  “An aging Parisian jewel thief and a half-mad ex-soldier?”

  “Do you consider the world well rid of them too? I suspect there are many who would say the same of a Covent Garden actress—or an ex-pirate with a tendency to frequent the city’s most notorious molly houses.”

  His lips quirked into a crooked smile. “I suppose you do have a point. Still—” He broke off, sitting forward suddenly.

  They were rounding the long, sweeping curve from Oxford Street to Broad. The fog was thicker here nearer the river, the dark trees and squat bell tower of St. Giles looming ghostlike out of the mist.

  “What is it?” she asked, just as a team of black horses erupted from a narrow lane to their left, eyes wild, hooves flashing, nostrils flaring wide in the cold night. In the horses’ wake, a heavy, old-fashioned traveling coach careened from side to side, its coachman driving straight toward Kat’s delicate town carriage.

  “What the hell?” swore Yates as their own coachman shouted in alarm. Horses squealed, the carriage lurching sharply as their driver hauled his team hard to the right. Kat had a tilted vision of tumbled gray tombstones and the rusty spikes topping the churchyard wall.

  The carriage shuddered to a standstill.

  “Are you all right?” asked Yates.

  “Yes. But—”

  The coachman’s startled cry cut through the night, followed by an ugly thump.

  She said in a low, urgent voice, “Yates,” just as a man dressed in footmen’s livery and a powdered wig jerked open the carriage door, a blunderbuss pistol in one hand.

  “What the devil?” thundered Yates.

  The man grabbed Kat’s wrist and hauled her forward. “If you’re smart, you’ll stay out of this,” he warned Yates in an unexpectedly cultured voice.

  “This is madness,” said Kat, falling heavily against him as he dragged her through the doorway to the pavement. The air was cold and damp against her face, the churchyard’s earthy scent of decay thick in her nostrils. “We have nothing of value for you to steal!”

  He pressed the cold steel of his pistol’s muzzle against her temple and gave her a tight smile. “There’s only one thing I need from you.”

  Panic thundered her heart, caught her breath in her tight throat as she heard the soft snick of the pistol’s hammer being pulled back. She lunged wildly against the hand on her arm, but his grip tightened cruelly, holding her fast.

  She saw Yates rear up in the open carriage doorway, a small pistol in one hand. The night filled with the roar of flames and the acrid stench of burnt powder, and the chest of the man holding her dissolved in a warm, wet spray of blood.

  He went down, hard.

  “Mason!” shouted a second assailant, who’d been holding a gun to the head of Kat’s own wide-eyed footman.

  “Yates! Look out!” cried Kat as the second assailant turned, leveled his double-barreled pistol on Yates, and fired.

  “Yates!” she screamed.

  Yates tumbled face-first to the pavement.

  Arm outstretched, the assailant calmly cocked his pistol’s second barrel and turned the muzzle toward Kat.

  Kat froze.

  “No! Leave her,” shouted the heavy coach’s tall, dark-caped driver. “That’s Russell Yates you’ve just killed, you fool. You know our orders. Grab Mason and let’s get out of here.”

  “Yates?” Kat went to crouch beside him. She was only dimly aware of the dark coachman whipping his horses, the old coach pulling away.

  “Oh, Yates,” she whispered, and gathered his bloody, broken body into her trembling arms.

  An hour later, Kat was crossing the entry hall of her Cavendish Square house when a preemptory peal sounded at the front door.

  She was expecting Paul Gibson, for she’d asked the surgeon to come examine her injured coachman. Instead, her butler opened the door to Charles, Lord Jarvis.

  She froze, one hand on the newel post, her husband’s blood still soaking the bodice and skirt of her silk evening gown.

  Jarvis carefully removed his mist-dampened hat, a faint smile touching his lips as he met her furious gaze. “I believe we need to talk. Don’t you agree?”

  Chapter 52

  T

  hat evening, Hero attended a concert with her mother while Sebastian settled in the library with a glass of brandy and the English translation
of The Key of Solomon. He was still at it some hours later when Jules Calhoun returned from St. Botolph-Aldgate.

  “Discover anything?” Sebastian asked, thankfully setting aside the ancient grimoire.

  “I did, actually,” said Calhoun. “It seems that in the immediate aftermath of the murder, Lambeth Street showed little interest in interviewing the residents of the area.”

  “When Yates was in custody.”

  “Yes. But constables began canvassing the neighborhood on Wednesday, asking all sorts of questions.”

  “Interesting, given that Leigh-Jones was at the time still confidently insisting on Yates’s guilt.”

  “Indeed, my lord. Yet it was Mr. Leigh-Jones himself who spoke to the corner greengrocer yesterday morning.”

  “Not today?”

  “No, my lord. Definitely yesterday.”

  “So before Foy’s death. I wonder what—”

  “Gov’nor!”

  Sebastian broke off as Tom’s voice echoed through the house. They could hear the boy’s footsteps pounding across the entry’s marble floor. “Gov’nor!” The tiger burst into the room, eyes wide, chest heaving, mouth agape as he sucked in air.

  “Well, what is it?” asked Sebastian.

  “It’s Russell Yates! ’E’s dead.”

  The ex-pirate lay beneath a sheet on a bed in his Cavendish Square house, his dark, too-long hair a stark contrast to the white linen pillow cover, his hands folded at his chest, his eyes closed, his features so serene that he might have been sleeping. But Sebastian knew death when he saw it.

  Kat knelt beside the bed, her head bowed in prayer, the beads of a rosary slipping through her fingers. Sebastian paused in the doorway, aware of a flicker of surprise. He’d always known Kat was raised Catholic, but somehow he’d assumed she no longer practiced her faith. In that, he realized, he had erred.

  She looked up then, made the sign of the cross, and rose to her feet.

  He went to enfold her in his arms, and she came to him without hesitation and trembling with need. Her cheeks were stained with tears, and as she rested her head on his shoulder, a faint sob racked her body. For one long, suspended moment, he simply held her. Then she drew back, putting space between them.

  He said, “Tell me what happened.”

  She swiped a palm across one wet cheek. “We were on our way to the theater. Yates had insisted on riding with me. He never does that, but he was worried because of the attack in the market. We were just making the curve near St. Giles when an old traveling coach came charging out of an alley and forced my own carriage into the churchyard wall. There were two men dressed in livery, as well as the driver. But I could tell by their voices that none of them were what they seemed. The driver struck my coachman with a long staff, knocking him from the seat. Gibson says he’s concussed, but he should be all right.”

  Sebastian knew a deep sense of disquiet. While some of the heaths surrounding the city could still be dangerous, it was unheard of for a carriage to be held up on the streets of London itself.

  She drew a shaky breath. “One of the men dragged me out of the carriage. He was going to kill me. Only, Yates shot him. And so . . .” Her voice cracked. She swallowed, but it was still a moment before she could continue. “And so one of the other men killed him. And then . . . It was the strangest thing. Once Yates was dead, they let me go and drove away.”

  “You think they were the same men who attacked you in Covent Garden Market?”

  She shook her head. “No. These men might have been dressed as servants, but their voices were educated.” Her jaw hardened, her nostrils flaring with a quickly indrawn breath. “I think they were Jarvis’s men.”

  “You recognized them?”

  “No. But he came to see me. Here. Tonight.”

  “Jarvis came here?”

  She nodded. “Less than two hours after Yates was killed. He wanted to make certain that I had a perfect understanding of the situation that now exists between us.”

  “Namely?”

  “I keep his secret, I keep my life. I choose to destroy him . . . I destroy myself.”

  Sebastian searched her strained face, noting the new lines of anger and determination that bracketed her mouth. He had never discovered the nature of the documents Yates held, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were powerful indeed.

  He said, “Did Jarvis tell you he was behind tonight’s attack?”

  “No. But what other explanation is there? Those men made it obvious their purpose was to kill me. Not Yates. Me. But once they’d shot Yates, they let me live. ‘You know our orders,’ I heard one of them say. I think Jarvis gave strict instructions that they were to kill either me or Yates—but not both of us.”

  “If the French are still convinced that Yates killed Eisler and stole the blue diamond, they would be very careful not to kill the only two people who might know the current location of the stone.”

  “True. But then, why not kidnap me, the way the men at Covent Garden sought to do? Why not take me, force me to hand over the diamond, and then kill me?”

  He studied her pale, beautiful face. “I don’t know. Have you managed to learn anything about the agent tasked by Napoléon to recover the French Blue?”

  She shook her head. “My friend claims not to have been told. From what he said, I suspect the individual involved is English, although a second person was recently dispatched from Paris to assist him.”

  “Him?”

  “Or her. My contact did not specify which.”

  She fell silent, her gaze drifting back to Yates’s pallid face.

  Sebastian reached out to take her hand in his. “I’m so sorry, Kat,” he said. “I know how much Yates had come to mean to you.”

  She drew in a deep breath that shuddered her chest. “In the past, I never allowed myself to be frightened. But . . . I’m frightened now.”

  He tightened his grip on her hand. “I will always stand your friend, Kat. Always. No matter what happens.”

  Her gaze met his. “Will you, Sebastian? And if Jarvis was behind this?”

  “I told Jarvis a year ago that if he harms a hair on your head, I’ll kill him. That hasn’t changed.”

  “And what will it do to your marriage, do you think, if you kill your wife’s father?”

  He said nothing, but there was no need. For they both knew the answer to her question.

  Chapter 53

  C

  harles, Lord Jarvis, was with the Regent in a gaming hell near Portland Place, his bored gaze fixed on a spinning roulette wheel, when Sebastian walked up to him and leaned in close to say, “I understand you made a visit to Cavendish Square this evening.”

  Jarvis shifted his gaze to the Prince. “You refer, I take it, to my condolence call on Yates’s devastated young widow?”

  “A condolence call? Is that how you would describe it?”

  “You would describe it differently?”

  Sebastian studied the big man’s full, arrogant face. “A year ago, I warned you that if you made a move to harm Kat Boleyn, I would kill you. Understand this: My marriage to your daughter changes nothing. If I discover that you were behind tonight’s attack, you’re a dead man.”

  Jarvis turned to look directly at him, the gray eyes that were so much like his daughter’s narrowed and hard. “Likewise, I presume you understand that your marriage to Hero in no way protects you. You interfere in any way with what I deem necessary for the preservation and prosperity of the realm, and I will eliminate you. Without hesitation or regret.”

  The two men’s gazes met, clashed.

  Sebastian gave a slow, measured bow and walked away.

  Hero returned to Brook Street to find Devlin sprawled in a worn leather armchair beside the library fire, his gaze on the glowing embers, the black cat stretched out on the hearthrug beside him.

  He looked up when she paused in the doorway. A nearby brace of candles cast a harsh pattern of light and shadow across his lean features. “Have you seen yo
ur father?” he asked.

  “No; why? Have you two been at swords and daggers again?”

  “Something like that.”

  She went to rest one hand on his shoulder in an awkward gesture of comfort. “I heard about Yates. I’m sorry; I know you liked him.”

  He covered her hand with his own. “He was an interesting man. I’d like to have known him better. And now . . . he’s dead.”

  “Kat Boleyn was unharmed in the attack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank goodness for that, at least.” She hesitated. “Surely you don’t think Jarvis had something to do with what happened tonight?”

  “Honestly?” His head fell back, his gaze meeting hers. “I don’t know.”

  She could feel the anger and determination that twanged through him. And she knew the heartache and deep disquiet of a woman who loved two men—a father and a husband—who hated each other.

  She said, her voice quiet but steady, “He’s my father, Devlin. I cherish no illusions as to what manner of man he is. But I still love him dearly.”

  “I know.”

  “And it doesn’t make any difference, does it?”

  “It does. But . . .”

  “But not enough.” She moved to scoop up the black cat and cradle him against her for a long, silent moment. Then she looked up. “I’m going to bed. Are you coming?”

  A soft whisper of ash falling on the grate filled the sudden hush in the room.

  He said, “Do you want me?”

  “Yes.”

  Their lovemaking that night had an edge to it, a raw desperation that hadn’t been there before.

  Neither spoke again of that day’s events, or of the shadow it had cast between them. But the awareness of it was there, as was the knowledge that the woman to whom Sebastian had lost his heart so long ago was now free.

  Saturday, 26 September

  Sebastian’s dreams took him many places. To a wild, windswept Cornish hillside overlooking a rocky cove; to hot, fever-racked nights beneath a West Indian sky aglitter with a universe of unfamiliar stars; to a dry, sun-blasted land of smoke-blackened walls and vacant-eyed women and the desiccated, bleached bones of long-dead men.