What Darkness Brings

Chapter 41



H

ero spent much of the morning in the shadow of Northumberland House, interviewing the gang of young sweepers who worked Charing Cross. An irregular open space at the end of the Strand where Whitechapel, Cockspur, and St. Martin’s Lane all came together, the intersection was heavily traveled. All agreed it was a “capital spot” with lots of “gentlefolk” passing to and fro. The problem was, there were simply too many of the lads for any of them to do well.

She was talking to a tall, gangly redhead named Murphy when she became aware of the sensation of being watched. She glanced around, her gaze assessing the intersection’s fenced-in bronze equestrian statue, the classical facade of the Royal Mews, the flock of ragged, barefoot boys clutching brooms. She had never considered herself a fanciful woman. But the unsettling conviction remained.

“It’s that feller over there,” said Murphy when she glanced around for the third or fourth time. “Be’ind the dustman’s cart just outside the coaching ’otel there. ’E’s been staring at ye fer a good long while.”

The dustman’s cart rolled forward, and she could see him now, an unkempt scarecrow of a man with sunken eyes and scarred cheeks and a madman’s fatuous grin.

Hero thrust her notebook into her reticule and paid the boy generously for his time. “Thank you.”

With one hand still in her reticule, she strode purposefully across the street toward Jud Foy. She half expected him to bolt. But he just stood there, grinning, while she walked up to him.

“Why are you watching me?” she demanded.

His mouth opened and his chest jerked as if he were laughing, only he made no sound. “Been watching you for days, I have. You only just now noticed it? Saw you talking t’ the little girl in Holburn.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated, his eyes clouding as if the question confused him.

“Why are you watching me?”

“You can learn all kinds of int’resting things about a person by watching them.”

“Follow me again,” said Hero, “and I’ll have you taken up by the constables.”

He gave another of those strange, soundless laughs. “If you see me.”

She started to turn away but stopped when he added, “I noticed you got yourself a cat. Black cats are unlucky, you know.”

She pivoted slowly to face him again. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Time was, people’d drown a black cat. Or maybe—”

She drew the brass-mounted muff pistol from her reticule and pointed it squarely between his eyes. “You’d best hope my cat is very long-lived, because if anything happens to him—anything—you’re going to wish you died a hero’s death on the battlefields of Europe. Do I make myself clear?”

She was dimly aware of a whiskered man in an old-fashioned frock coat who turned to stare at her openmouthed; a dowager in a sedan chair let out a startled shriek. Foy held himself painfully still, his idiot’s grin wiped from his vapid face.

“You’d shoot a man over a cat?”

“Without compunction.”

“Mother of God. You’re as mad as your husband.”

She shook her head. “The difference between Devlin and me is that he probably wouldn’t actually shoot you. I would.” She pointed the pistol’s nozzle toward the sky and took a step back. “Stay away from my cat.”



Sebastian arrived back at Brook Street to find Hero seated on the steps of the terrace overlooking the parterred garden. She still wore her dove gray carriage dress trimmed in the palest pink. But she’d taken off her plumed pink velvet hat and kid gloves and laid them with her reticule on the paving stones beside her. She held the black cat in her lap and was stroking him under the chin when Sebastian walked up to her.

“The Member of Parliament from South Whitecliff tells me that my wife shot three men at Charing Cross this morning. But the baker’s boy swears it was only one.”

She buried her face in the cat’s soft black fur. “You should know better than to believe everything you hear. I found Jud Foy watching me again. He threatened the cat. I suggested that neither activity was a good idea. But with great restraint, I did not shoot him.”

Sebastian moved her reticule so that he could sit beside her and heard the heavy chink of her flintlock. “Was he impressed with your sincerity?”

“I believe he was.”

He reached out to caress her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I’m sorry.”

She raised her head and looked at him. “I may perhaps have overreacted.”

“I don’t think so.”

She gave a soft chuckle. But her smile faded quickly. “I don’t understand why he’s doing this—what he wants.”

“Matt Tyson says he was kicked in the head by a mule.”

“Tyson? Tyson knows him?”

“Foy testified for the defense at Tyson’s court-martial—he was a sergeant with Tyson’s regiment. A rifleman.”

She flipped the cat onto his back so that she could rub his belly. “Jamie Knox was a rifleman, wasn’t he?”

“Different regiment.”

She looked up then, her gaze meeting his. “You think there are so many ex-riflemen in London that they don’t know each other?”



Jamie Knox was seated at a rear table in an eating house off Houndsditch when Sebastian drew out the chair opposite him and sat down.

“Please, do have a seat,” said the tavern owner, cutting a slice of roast mutton.

“I’m looking for an ex-rifleman named Jud Foy.”

Knox waved his fork in an expansive gesture that took in the simple wainscoted room with its closely crowded tables and chairs, its cheerfully glowing fire. “Don’t see him here, do you?”

“But you do know him.”

“I know lots of people. It’s one of the hazards of running a tavern.”

Sebastian studied Knox’s lean, high-boned face. The likeness between Sebastian and this man was startling. Both had the same deep-set golden eyes beneath straight dark brows, and similarly molded lips. But it was the differences that intrigued Sebastian the most. In Knox’s case, the nose inclined more toward the aquiline, and there was a faint cleft in his chin. Characteristics he inherited from his barmaid mother? Sebastian wondered. Or from the unknown father both men probably shared?

“You still all fired up about Eisler?” asked Knox, stabbing his fork into a potato.

“I’m still looking into his death, yes.”

Knox chewed slowly, then swallowed. “What’s it got to do with Foy?”

“I don’t know that it has anything to do with him. But the man has been menacing my wife.”

A faint gleam of amusement deepened the gold in the other man’s eyes. “I heard about this morning’s incident at Charing Cross.”

“Did you, now?”

Knox reached for his ale. “Foy’s not right in his head.”

“I heard he was kicked by a mule.”

“That’s the official story.”

Sebastian laid his forearms on the tabletop and leaned into them. “Care to elaborate?”

Knox shrugged. “I heard he was found near the stables with his head bashed in. Could’ve been a mule. Could also have been a rifle butt.”

“Why would someone want to cave the man’s head in?”

“They say Foy had just testified at some officer’s court-martial.”

“This was after Talavera?”

Knox shrugged. “Could be. I’ve forgotten the details. The man isn’t exactly one of my boon intimates. You did catch the part about him not being right in the head, didn’t you?”

“Do you know where I could find him?”

Knox cut another slice of mutton, chewed, and swallowed.

Sebastian said, “You do know, don’t you?”

“If I did, why would I tell you?”

“I think Foy might be in danger.”

Knox huffed a soft laugh. “From Lord and Lady Devlin?”

“No. From the man—or men—who killed Daniel Eisler.”

Knox pushed his plate away and reached for his ale. He wrapped both hands around the tankard, then simply sat silently staring at it.

Sebastian waited.

“I’ve heard he keeps a room at the Three Moons, near St. Sepulchre, in Holburn.” Knox drained his tankard and pushed to his feet. “Don’t make me regret telling you.”