Why Mermaids Sing: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian took one step toward the open door at the end of the cobbled aisle, then knew it for a mistake. Newman still had another barrel. Silhouetted against the open doorway, Sebastian would be impossible to miss.

  He dove instead into the first stall, his injured shoulder exploding in fire as he careened into the plank wall and slipped to his knees. The carriage horse whinnied in alarm, its head tossing, its hooves clattering on the straw-covered cobbles.

  Sebastian rolled quickly to his feet, his head spinning as he drew back into the shadows. He could feel the drops of mingled sweat and rainwater dripping from his hair to roll down his cheeks, hear the doctor’s boots in the cobbled passage. Slipping his knife from his boot, Sebastian reached out and unhooked the bay’s tether. He held the length of leather clutched in his fist, the edges of the stiff hide digging into his palm as he waited for Newman to come into view.

  He watched the doctor pass the stall, his gaze fixed on the open doorway at the end of the passage. The bay snorted and tossed its head, just as Sebastian let the tether drop.

  The sound of the leather slapping against the stall’s heelpost brought Newman’s head around, his eyes wide. Sebastian pricked the bay’s flanks and sent it charging out of the stall. Newman took a quick step back, his finger tightening on the trigger in a reflex action. The fowling piece exploded in a deafening concussion that filled the stables with flames and smoke. Shot ripped through the nearest heelpost, torn shards of wood and splinters flying through the air as Sebastian dove into him.

  The force of the impact sent Newman crashing back against the harness room wall. Their feet tangled, Newman going down to smack his back hard against the cobbled floor. Sebastian slammed on top of him, the knife blade held tight against the doctor’s throat.

  In the sudden stillness, his ears still ringing from the shot, Sebastian could hear the sawing of his own breath and the roar of the rain through the open doors. And something else. The distant thunder of approaching horses ridden fast.

  Newman’s lips parted, his chest shuddering as he sought to draw air into his aching lungs. “Kill me,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

  Sebastian shook his head. He thought about Francesca Bellamy, about Lady Carmichael, about Dominic Stanton’s mother, now half mad with her grief. And he felt a rush of fury that submerged all shreds of pity or understanding. “No. You said it yourself. Death ends all suffering. And you deserve to suffer. For what you did to those innocent young men and for what their deaths have done to those who loved them.”

  They heard a shout from the yard and a boy’s thin voice saying, “In the stables. They’re in the stables.”

  Newman’s eyes squeezed shut, his breathing still ragged. “I did it for Gideon. I was never able to do anything for him in life. The least I could do was avenge his death.”

  “No.” Sebastian closed his fist on the doctor’s coat and hauled him to his feet. “You did it for yourself.”

  Chapter 65

  Sir Henry Lovejoy hunched his shoulders against the rain as he watched his constables bundle the Kentish doctor out of the stables.

  “I thought this wasn’t your case?” said Devlin, coming up beside him.

  “It’s not,” said Henry, swinging his head to look at the Viscount. He stood hatless in the rain, his once fine coat, waistcoat, and breeches torn and smeared with mud and blood and bits of leaves and straw. “Good God. We need to get you to a surgeon.”

  “It’ll keep.” Devlin scrubbed a hand across his face, wiping the rain from his eyes. “How’s the boy?”

  “He’s a good lad. He’ll be all right. Thanks to the laudanum, I don’t think he remembers much. But I’ve no doubt his testimony—combined with whatever evidence a search of the farm buildings yields—will be more than enough to see the good doctor hang.”

  Devlin’s features remained impassive as he stared off across the mist-filled valley. “There are some bodies in the wood just past the second tollgate out of London. You might want to send a couple of your men to deal with them.”

  “Bodies?”

  “Lord Stanton and several of his henchmen. They tried to kill me.”

  “And so you killed them?”

  “I was in a hurry.”

  Henry sighed.

  “Sir Henry.”

  Henry turned to see Constable Higgins coming toward them across the yard, his plump cheeks red with exertion, something small and white clutched in one fist. “Constable?”

  “I thought you’d want to see this,” said Higgins, holding out a small porcelain figurine. “We found it in a bag under the seat of Newman’s gig.”

  “What is it?” said Henry.

  The Viscount reached to take the delicate statue in his hands. “A mermaid. It’s a mermaid.”

  Henry groped for his handkerchief. “Merciful heavens.”

  “What will happen to them?” Devlin asked, staring down at the figurine. “I mean Atkinson and Carmichael and the absent Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop.”

  “Nothing, I suspect. I’ve never known the Crown to prosecute cases of cannibalism on the high seas.”

  “Actually, I was thinking about what they did to David Jarvis.”

  Henry shrugged. “We’ve no way of knowing who struck the fatal blow.”

  “The crew was hanged for his death.”

  “The crew was hanged for mutiny.”

  Devlin’s lips flattened into a sardonic smile. “Of course.”

  Henry knew a profound inner sense of uneasiness. “You’re planning something. What is it?”

  A gleam of amusement touched the Viscount’s haunted yellow eyes. “I don’t think you want to know.”

  “I think I’ve patched you up more in the past nine months than I did during the War,” said Paul Gibson, wrapping a length of bandage around Sebastian’s upper arm. “Here. Put your finger on that.”

  They were in Sebastian’s library, with Sebastian seated, shirtless, on the edge of his desk. He smiled and held the end of the bandage in place while the doctor rummaged in his bag for a pair of scissors. “What is war, after all, but an organized, sanctioned form of mass murder?”

  Gibson cut the length of gauze and tied it off, his attention seemingly all for his work. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard the latest rumors?”

  “What rumors?”

  “About Russell Yates and Kat Boleyn. They’ve been married by special license.”

  “What?”

  Gibson pushed out his breath in a sigh. “I was afraid you didn’t know anything about it.”

  “No,” said Sebastian. “I didn’t.” He fixed his gaze unseeingly on the bowl of bloody water beside them while his friend went to work on the knife cuts on Sebastian’s wrists. Ever since he’d turned Aaron Newman over to Sir Henry down at Oak Hollow Farm, Sebastian had been trying to figure out how, with marriage out of the question, he was going to keep Kat safe from Jarvis. But it seemed Kat had found a way to protect herself.

  Now, freed from the desperate rush to catch a killer and devise some way to shield Kat from Jarvis’s malevolence, Sebastian suddenly found himself with nothing to distract him from the brutal reality of a future without Kat as his love, without Kat in his life. He felt a hideous emptiness yawn deep within his being, and for one blinding moment, the agony of it was so raw that it took his breath.

  “Sebastian—” Gibson broke off as the sound of running feet and the bang of a distant door foretold the arrival of Tom.

  “I’ve found one,” said Tom, his breath coming fast and his cheeks flushed. “I found you a valet. ’E’s been a gentleman’s gentleman for more’n twenty years. ’E knows all about yer interest in murder and the rigs from Rosemary Lane you sometimes wear, and it don’t bother ’im a bit. In fact, ’e’ll be a right handy one to ’ave around next time we find ourselves with a murder to investigate, ’cause ’e knows near every rookery and cracksman and Black Legs in town.”

  Sebastian slid off the edge of the desk. “And how, prec
isely, does he come to have this information?”

  “’Is ma owns the Blue Anchor.”

  “She what?” The Blue Anchor was the most notorious flash house in town, frequented by the worst sort of Morocco Men, dashers and beau-traps.

  Tom swallowed. “I know what yer thinking, but you got it wrong. Calhoun’s ma was determined ’er son weren’t going to grow up to be no receiver or fancy man, and ’e ’asn’t.” Tom hesitated. “’Cept for one brief spell ’e did in Newgate, and that weren’t ’is fault.”

  Gibson choked and turned away to hide his amusement.

  “What did you say this paragon’s name is?” asked Sebastian.

  “Jules Calhoun. ’E says ’e can come round tomorrow evening for an interview, if’n yer interested.” Tom cast a worried glance at Gibson, who was now openly laughing. “Are you interested?”

  “After weeks of making due with the footman? Of course I’m interested.” Sebastian pointed a warning finger at his tiger. “But if so much as a shoestring goes missing in this house, it’ll be on your account.”

  Tom’s face cleared. “’E’s a right one. You’ll see.”

  Tom dashed off, while Gibson set about collecting his various implements and returning them to his bag. After a moment, he said, “Have you seen her yet?” There was no need to identify which her he referred to. Kat’s name hovered between them still.

  Sebastian crossed the room to splash brandy into two glasses. “No. Not yet.”

  Gibson looked up from his task. “You’re going to have to find some way to put it all behind you, Sebastian. Kat. The War. The things you saw, the things you did.” This desperate, futile quest to find your mother. Again the words hung in the air, unsaid but there.

  Sebastian came to hand his friend his drink. “And have you put it all behind you then, Paul? The War? The loss of your leg?” The hunger for the sweet relief to be found in an elixir of poppies?

  The skin beside Gibson’s eyes crinkled in amusement as he raised his brandy in a silent toast. “No. But we doctors are always better at giving advice than taking it.”

  Chapter 66

  MONDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 1811

  Kat was in her dressing room, supervising the packing of her trunks, when she looked up to find Devlin standing in the doorway.

  “I’d heard you were hurt,” she said, her worried gaze tracing the cuts and purple bruises that discolored his face, the arm that hung stiff and awkward in a sling at his side.

  “It’s nothing.” He turned his head to survey the litter of half-packed trunks and tumbled gowns strewn about the room. “It’s true then, what they’re saying? You have wed?”

  She nodded, barely trusting herself to speak. “Yes.”

  He studied her face. “Why Yates?”

  “He can protect me. He has evidence that would destroy Jarvis, were it to be made public.”

  “But, Kat, what kind of a marriage can this be, with a man who…” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

  Her voice shook as she answered him. “The only kind I want.” She cleared her throat, trying to ease the tight constriction that felt as if it might choke her. “I’ve let it be known that the Post scrambled the announcement of my coming marriage. There will doubtless be some talk, but it should die down.”

  He shrugged one shoulder, but said nothing. She knew it meant nothing to him, the public whispers and speculations.

  The old urge to go to him was still there—the urge to take him in her arms and enfold him in the comfort of her embrace. The strength of that wanting—despite all she knew, despite the shame now attached to what they had been to each other—shocked and appalled her. She gripped her hands together against her skirt. “Have you spoken to Hendon?”

  His face was oddly blank, as if carefully drained of all emotion. “I’ve nothing more to say to him.”

  “It’s not his fault, what happened between us. God knows he tried to discourage it.”

  “He took your mother as his mistress.”

  “And you took me as yours.”

  “I would have made you my wife.”

  “Yes. Well…at least we were spared that.”

  He searched her face, his yellow eyes hard, questioning. “What about you? Do you forgive him?”

  Kat let out a sigh that shuddered her breasts. “For my mother’s sake, no. He would have taken her child away from her. Yet he wanted what was best for me, didn’t he?”

  “Or what was best for himself. Does he plan to acknowledge you?”

  She felt a wry smile tug at one corner of her lips. “That’s asking a bit much, isn’t it? For the Earl of Hendon to acknowledge an actress as his daughter—an actress who everyone knows was mistress to his son?”

  “Kat—” He reached as if to touch her, but she jerked away.

  “No. You mustn’t.”

  She watched his hand fall back to his side. She found she was no longer able to fathom his thoughts, the exact tenor of his emotions. She knew Devlin better than she’d ever known anyone in her life, but she knew him as a lover. How was she ever to learn to know him as a brother?

  “I look at you,” he said, his voice a torn whisper. “I look at you, and I see my father’s eyes staring back at me. And still in my heart, I can’t accept it. Surely if you were my sister, I would know it?”

  They studied each other across the crackling distance that separated them. She said, “How could we ever have imagined such a thing?”

  He shook his head. “I am trying. But I don’t know how to make my love simply go away.”

  She saw the pain in his eyes and knew there was nothing she could say, nothing she could do to ease it. She wanted to say, I love you. I will always love you.

  Instead, she said, “We must.”

  The Earl of Hendon found his firstborn child, Amanda, seated at her embroidery frame in the morning room.

  “I’ve come to tell you I have another daughter,” he said, standing in the center of the rug as she continued to set neat stitches in the chair cover she was making. “An illegitimate daughter.”

  Amanda let out a peal of laughter, her needle flashing in and out. “Good God. Are you getting soft in your old age? What precious little thing has managed to convince you she’s your long-lost offspring?”

  “Kat Boleyn.”

  All trace of amusement fled her face. She set the embroidery frame aside. “You can’t be serious.”

  “But I am.”

  Amanda raised one eyebrow. “How clever of you. So that’s why the marriage has been called off. However did you manage to convince her?”

  Hendon worked his jaw back and forth. “What do you think? That I contrived this tale to drive a wedge between her and Devlin? I’m not that clever. She is my daughter. Of that, there is no doubt.”

  He watched a slow, unpleasant smile spread across Amanda’s face. “So now they believe they’ve been committing incest all these years? And of course you said not a word to disabuse them of that notion.”

  Hendon tightened his jaw.

  “He’ll discover the truth, you know. Someday. And when he does, this will be just one more lie you’ve told him, one more lie he’ll never forgive you for.”

  Hendon let his gaze rove over her haughty face, with its unsuccessful blending of his own blunt features with the fine-boned beauty of her mother. He wanted to deny it. Instead he turned and left her there with her embroidery hoop beside the cold hearth. He had almost reached the doorway when he heard her start to laugh.

  He kept walking.

  Charles, Lord Jarvis stood beside the library windows overlooking the rear garden of his house in Berkeley Square. He was calm. Rage made men do stupid things, and Jarvis was never stupid. He had suffered a setback—several setbacks—and he had some scores to settle. But he was in no hurry, and he was already beginning to see a way the situation might be turned to his advantage.

  His butler scratched discreetly at the door. “Lord Devlin to see you, my lord.”

  Jarvis kept h
is back to the room, his gaze on the garden below. “I’m not at home.”

  “Yes, my l—”

  “I suspected you might deny me,” said the Viscount in a bland voice. “So I’ve come anyway.”

  Jarvis’s head snapped around, his eyes narrowing. The Viscount had his left arm in a sling and a patch of sticking plaster on his forehead. Jarvis grunted. “Who did the damage? Lord Stanton or this Kentish doctor I’ve been hearing about?”

  “Both.”

  Jarvis reached for his snuffbox. “Say what you have to say and then get out of my house.”

  Devlin smiled. He carried a leather book tucked under one arm, a large volume with a charred binding that he set on the corner of Jarvis’s desk. “I’ve brought you this.”

  Jarvis frowned. “What is it?”

  “The Harmony’s log. I think you’ll find it makes interesting reading.”

  Jarvis stayed where he was.

  Devlin turned toward the door, but paused with one hand on the knob to look back and say, “I’d like to have known your son. You have much to be proud of. Good day, my lord.”

  When Devlin had gone, Jarvis stared at the charred log on his desk. It was a moment before he crossed the room to pick it up.

  He read the log seated in the embrasure beside the window. It was some time before he finished, closing the log with a quiet snap. The sun had sunk low behind the neighboring rooftops, lengthening the shadows in the library.

  And still he sat there, until the last of the day faded from the sky, and the lamplighter on his rounds set a flickering flame to the oil lamps in the square.