Knox hesitated. “Let’s just say I consider Russell Yates something of a friend.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s hard, sun-darkened face. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Knox had a damned good reason for showing him the manuscript, although he suspected friendship wasn’t part of it. But all he said was, “Who do you think killed Eisler?”
Knox leaned back in his seat and crossed his outthrust boots at the ankles. “I’d say there’s probably somewhere between five hundred and a thousand men—and women—in this town who wanted to see that bastard dead. With odds like that, it’s inevitable that he was eventually going to run up against someone willing to do more than just wish. But if you’re asking me for names . . . I haven’t any.”
“Except for Se?or Ferdinand Arroyo?”
Knox brought his tankard to his lips and drank. “Last I heard, Arroyo was in Caen.”
Sebastian closed the aged manuscript’s fragile cover and rose to his feet. “Thank you.”
“Take it,” said Knox, leaning forward to push the manuscript across the table toward him. “I’ve no use for it. It’s not like I read Hebrew.”
“You could sell it.”
“The old-book business never appealed to me. Take it. If you can find someone to read it for you, you might find it . . . useful.”
Sebastian wondered what a three-hundred-year-old manuscript could tell him about last night’s murder of a diamond merchant. But he wrapped the aged volume in its oilcloth covering again and tucked it beneath his arm. “I’ll see it’s returned to you.”
Knox shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Sebastian had almost reached the door when Knox stopped him. “You said Eisler’s butler remembered me.”
Sebastian paused to look back at him. “That’s right.”
“I never gave him my name.”
“He didn’t know your name. But he remembered what you looked like.”
Knox widened his eyes. “His powers of description must be something to be wondered at.”
“He said you looked enough like me to be my brother.”
“Ah.”
The two men’s gazes met and held. Neither spoke, for there was no need. One might be the son of the beautiful, faithless Countess of Hendon, while the other was the bastard child of a Ludlow barmaid, but the resemblance between them was as undeniable as it was inexplicable.
Chapter 11
S
ebastian walked out of the Black Devil to find a woman waiting for him in a fashionable high-perch phaeton drawn by a dainty white mare. She had her famous auburn-shot hair tucked up beneath a shako-style hat, and a veil hid most of her face. But he would have recognized Kat Boleyn anywhere.
He paused for a moment, aware of an unpleasant tightening in his chest. Then he stepped up to the kerb. “How did you know where to find me?” he asked.
Rather than answer, she turned to the liveried groom at her side. “Wait for me here, Patrick.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, yielding his place to Sebastian.
“Yates told me you’d been to see him this morning,” she said as Sebastian vaulted up into the high seat beside her. “I wanted to thank you for offering to help.”
“For God’s sake, Kat. As if I wouldn’t? Why the bloody hell didn’t you come to me instead of Hendon?”
She gave her horses the office to start, her gaze on the lane ahead. “You know why.”
“If you’re worried about Hero, I think you underestimate her.”
She remained silent, her attention all for the task of guiding the mare between a brewer’s wagon and a coal cart.
He said, “You didn’t tell me how you knew where to find me.”
“It was more in the order of a good guess. Yates says Knox was involved in smuggling goods into the country for Eisler. Only, he doesn’t know what.”
Sebastian shifted his grip on the oilcloth bundle in his hands. “According to Knox, it was books. Strange old manuscripts written mainly in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.”
She threw him a quick, incredulous glance. “Old books? But . . . why?”
“He seems to have been something of a collector, our Mr. Eisler.”
“The man was a bastard.”
“That too.”
She swung sharply around the corner. “Does Knox know anything about Eisler’s death?”
“He says he doesn’t.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“He’s not exactly a pillar of rectitude and responsibility.”
“True.”