What Darkness Brings

Chapter 40



H

e found Kat curled up on the sofa before a fire in her drawing room, her left arm resting in a sling.

“Please don’t get up,” Sebastian said, as she struggled to do so.

She sat up anyway, her small stockinged feet peeking out from beneath the hem of her muslin gown. “I asked Hendon not to carry this tale to you. But he obviously didn’t listen.”

Sebastian came to rest his hands on her shoulders and stare down into her upturned face. “How are you? Truly.”

“Gibson says it’s nothing serious—a sprain only. One of the men grabbed hold of my arm and I must have twisted it in my attempt to get away.”

“What the bloody hell happened? And why the devil did you go to Hendon rather than to me?”

“Stop glowering, Sebastian. I didn’t go to Hendon. He stopped by this evening by chance to see how I was doing, and I made the mistake of giving him an honest answer when he asked how I came to injure myself.”

“Did you give him an honest answer?”

She smiled. “For the most part. I have no idea who those two men were. But I don’t think their intent was to kill me—at least, not right away. They were trying to drag me to a cart they had waiting nearby.”

Sebastian walked away to stand at the window overlooking the darkened square below. “Did you act on the question I asked you this afternoon?”

“I did, yes. But I only sent a vague message to someone requesting a meeting. I didn’t go into detail on why.”

He glanced over at her. “They might know why.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe this individual would harm me.”

“So certain?”

She smoothed her free hand down over her lap and did not answer him.

He said, “I think Napoléon’s men are still looking for that diamond. If they didn’t kill Eisler but believe that Yates did, they might think he has it.”

“So why snatch me?”

“To use as a bargaining chip, perhaps?”

“As in, ‘You give us the diamond and we will give you your wife’?” She considered it a moment, then said, “I believe one of the men who tried to grab me may have been French.”

Sebastian frowned. “Thin? With a pockmarked face?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I tangled with him in Seven Dials last night.” He paused. “Did you have a chance to speak to Yates?”

She nodded. “You were right about Beresford and Tyson. They are mollies.” She kept her gaze on his face. “That’s significant; why?”

“Eisler liked to collect information on people.”

“You mean for blackmail?”

“I don’t think he extorted actual cash payments in return for his silence. He used what he knew to influence people, to force them to do what he wanted them to do.”

“I’d call that blackmail.”

“In a sense, I suppose it is.”

She frowned thoughtfully. “According to Yates, Blair Beresford is the younger son of a small Irish landowner. What could he possibly have that Eisler either wanted or could use?”

“I wasn’t thinking about Beresford.”

“You mean Tyson?” She was silent for a moment, as if considering this. Then she said, “He’s also a younger son.”

“He is. But he had gems he was selling to Eisler. Eisler may have tried to use the information he had to drive a hard bargain.”

“You’re suggesting this gives Tyson a motive for murder?”

“I’d say it does, yes. Although if Eisler tried to use threats to pressure Matt Tyson, he was a fool. Tyson is the kind of man who would as soon slit your throat as look at you.”

“Where does he say he was last Sunday evening?”

“Beresford claims they spent the evening in Tyson’s rooms in St. James’s Street.”

She raked the curls off her forehead with a hand Sebastian noticed was not quite steady. “We’re running out of time, Devlin. Yates’s trial has been scheduled for Saturday.”

He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms and hold her in comfort. It occurred to him that if she were, in truth, his sister, then he could have done so and no one would have thought twice about it.

And that suddenly struck him as the cruelest irony of all.

He said, “The person you sent your message to—who was it?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Even to save your own life?”

But she only shook her head, a sad smile playing about her full, beautiful lips.



Leaving the house in Cavendish Square, Sebastian walked into a crisp night scented by a pungent mixture of coal smoke and damp stone and the hot oil from the street lamps that flickered faintly, as if stirred by an unseen hand. He started to leap up into his waiting carriage, then changed his mind and sent his coachman home.

Turning toward Regents Park, he walked down wide, paved streets lined with stately brick and stucco houses that stood where just twenty-five years before he and his brothers had run through meadows golden with ripening hay. In those days, there’d been a small pond shaded by chestnuts—just about there, he decided, where that livery stable now stood. He remembered one time when his brother Cecil had found an old Roman coin buried in the mud while they were collecting tadpoles, and Richard, the eldest and therefore their father’s heir, had tried to claim it as his own in some twisted interpretation of the rules of primogeniture. Their mother had been there too, the sun warm on her fair hair, her voice gay with laughter as she separated the squabbling boys. And none of it—none of it—had really been as he’d thought it to be.

At what point? he thought again. At what point do the last barriers drop? When are the final secrets revealed?

But when he arrived back at Brook Street, it was to find Hero’s bedroom in darkness. He stood for a moment in the doorway and watched the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. Then he turned away.

By the time he awoke the next morning, she had already left for more of her interviews.


Thursday, 24 September


At precisely five minutes to eleven the next morning, Sebastian walked into the Lambeth Street Public Office to find Bertram Leigh-Jones bustling about with flapping robes, his wig askew as he sorted through a stack of files.

“We don’t open until eleven,” snapped the magistrate. “What do you want?”

“I’m wondering if you have a list of the people who owed Daniel Eisler money.”

Leigh-Jones grunted, his attention all for his files. “Now, why would I want something like that?”

“From what I’m hearing, Eisler dabbled in everything from blackmail to magic to sexual exploitation. A man like that accumulates a lot of enemies.”

The magistrate looked up. “Maybe. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Russell Yates is the one who actually killed him. He’ll be standing trial this Saturday.”

“Rather hasty, don’t you think?”

“As it happens, no, I don’t. The man is clearly guilty. Why keep him locked up at His Majesty’s expense when he could provide a spot of sport for the populace by dancing at the end of a rope?”

Sebastian studied the man’s overfed, self-confident face. “I’ve heard it said that when King George was still in his right mind, it was his habit to personally examine the cases of each and every prisoner condemned to death in London. They say he could frequently be found weighing the evidence against them in the small hours of the night, and that he would closet himself with his chaplain to pray at the time of their deaths.”

“Did he, now?” Leigh-Jones banged his files together and gathered them under one beefy arm. “Well, it’s no wonder he went mad, then, now, isn’t it? If you ask me, a morning spent watching a half dozen rascals hang is nearly as good a sport as a foxhunt.” He gave Sebastian a broad wink. “You could join us afterward at the keeper’s house for a breakfast of deviled kidneys. It’s quite the tradition, you know. Now, you’ll have to excuse me; I’ve a hearing to attend.” He put up a hand to straighten his wig. “Good day to you, m’lord.”