What Darkness Brings

Chapter 56



“’E

lp!” she shouted. “’E’s killin’ me. Somebody ’elp!”

Sebastian kicked in the door hard enough to splinter the thin wooden panels and slam it back against the wall.

The room beyond was small and dingy, the air close and foul. A single tallow candle on a battered table near the narrow bed flared in the sudden draft, casting long shadows across the bare floorboards and ancient paneled walls. Blair Beresford, his hat gone, his handsome features twisted with determination, had pinned a tiny slip of a girl against a tall, battered wardrobe, her birdlike wrists clasped in one hand and wrenched over her head.

“You son of a bitch,” swore Sebastian, tackling him in a rush.

The two men went down together, hard. Jenny Davie, finding herself unexpectedly free, broke for the door.

“A guinea if you grab her and hold on to her!” Sebastian shouted at Drummer, then ducked his head as Beresford swung a fist at his face.

Sebastian scrambled to grab the man’s wrists, grunting as Beresford jabbed his knee into Sebastian’s groin and tried to scoot backward on his elbows. He was dimly aware of Jenny Davie shouting, “Ow, let me go, ye little shabbaroon!” as Drummer snagged her skirts and held on.

Beresford threw another wild punch that grazed the side of Sebastian’s jaw. Grunting, Sebastian fisted his hand in the front of Beresford’s waistcoat and hauled him up to slam his back against the near wall. “God damn it,” swore Sebastian, breathing hard. “Somehow, I never pegged you for a killer.”

Beresford bucked against Sebastian’s hold, then subsided in resignation, a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “What the devil are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Then why the hell are you here?”

“The diamond.” He jerked his head toward the girl. “She must have taken it! I was thinking that if I could recover it, it would be a way to pay Hope back for all he’s done for me.”

Sebastian swung his head to look over his shoulder at the girl, who had suddenly gone utterly still. “What makes you think she has it?”

“Because no one else does, and she was there. I dropped her in Fountain Lane less than half an hour before Eisler was killed. Look—I know I lied to you when I said I didn’t take Eisler a girl that night. But everything else I told you was the truth. I swear!”

Sebastian tightened his hold on the younger man, his lips curling away from his teeth in a hard smile. “Why the bloody hell should I believe you? I think you shot Eisler, and now you’re here to get rid of your last witness.”

“Oy, what ye talkin’ about, then?” scoffed Jenny Davie, her voice sharp. “’E ain’t the cove what shot that old goat.” Then, as if suddenly aware that she had captured the interested attention of everyone in the room, she looked quickly from one to the next and tried to take a step back. “What? What’s everybody starin’ at me for?”

For the first time, Sebastian took a good, long look at the girl Hero called the Blue Satin Cinderella. She looked more like fifteen than seventeen, with an incredibly tiny, small-boned frame and hair that might have been honey colored if it were cleaner. Her face was thin and delicately featured, her eyes a soft, luminous gray, her chin small and pointed.

“You saw who did it?” said Sebastian, releasing his hold on Blair Beresford. The younger man slid down the wall and just sat there, back pressed to the panels, legs outstretched.

“Course I did,” she said. “That old goat took and shoved me in a nasty little cupboard when someone come a-knockin’ at the door afore ’e was done wit’ me. I saw the ’ole thing, and this cove”—she jerked her chin dismissively toward Beresford—“weren’t even there.”

“So who did shoot him?” Sebastian demanded.

“’Ow the bloody ’ell should I know?”

“You just said you saw him.”

“That don’t mean I know who ’e was!”

Sebastian tamped down a spurt of impatience. “But you can tell me what he looked like.”

Jenny shook her matted hair out of her face. “Course I can. A death’s-’ead on a mopstick, ’e was.”

Sebastian stared at her, not understanding. “A what?”

She huffed her breath and rolled her eyes. “Ye know, a tall, skinny cove what looks like ’e ain’t long for this world. An’ ’e ’ad one of them cavalry mustaches.”

Sebastian stared at her with the heavy heart of a man who has just had one of his worst fears confirmed.

“If ye ask me,” Jenny was saying, “’e weren’t right in the ’ead. ’E come in wavin’ that gun around and sayin’ ’e were there t’ bell the cat.”

“And then what happened?” asked Sebastian, keeping his voice even with difficulty.

“That old goat, ’e laughed at the cove, wanted to know ’ow exactly did ’e propose t’ do that? Only, just then someone else come poundin’ on the front door real hard. The skinny cove got spooked and looked around, and the old goat pounced on him. That’s when the gun went off.”

“And what did the, er, skinny cove do then?”

“Why, ’e bolted out the back door, just afore these other two coves come in, one after the other, with the chinless, curly-’eaded one hollerin’ ‘murder.’”

“And the diamond?” asked Blair Beresford from where he sat on the floor, a lock of golden hair tumbled across his dusty forehead. “What happened to the diamond?”

Jenny Davie pushed out her lips, opened her eyes wide, and shook her head. “I keep tellin’ ye, I don’t know nothin’ about no diamond.”

“Then why are you hiding here, in Covent Garden?” asked Sebastian. “Why didn’t you go to the magistrates and tell them what you know?”

He saw the leap of fear in her wide gray eyes, saw her small pointed chin jut forward in determination, and knew his mistake an instant too late.

“Hold on to her!” he shouted at Drummer, just as Jenny hauled back her fist and punched the boy in the nose.

“Ow,” he cried, tears starting in his eyes, blood spurting as he let go of the girl to cup both hands over his face.

“Stop her!” Sebastian yelled as Jenny bolted for the stairs. “Bloody hell.”

Sebastian pelted after her, half running, half falling down the steep, narrow staircase. He reached the entrance passage just in time to see the girl squeeze through a boisterous knot of drovers trying to shove into the taproom.

By the time Sebastian pushed his way into the street, Jenny Davie had disappeared, swallowed up by the fog.