Sebastian let his gaze travel over her exquisite, familiar features. He had fallen in love with her when she was sixteen and he barely twenty-one. So long ago now, long before Hendon’s machinations had driven them apart not once, but twice. Before Sebastian joined the army and saw death, destruction, and savage cruelty on a scale that had come close to expunging his humanity and withering his soul. Before Kat began feeding information to the French in an effort to aid Ireland, the land of her birth. Before she’d married Russell Yates in a desperate maneuver to save herself from the vindictive wrath of Charles, Lord Jarvis, who’d promised her torture and an ugly death.
Sebastian knew her marriage to Yates had never been—could never be—more than one of convenience. Yates’s association with the most beautiful, most desirable woman of the London stage was for him a tactic to quiet the whispers about his sexuality, while Kat, in exchange, gained the protection of whatever damaging information Yates held against Jarvis. It was a marriage devoid of both sexual attraction and romantic love. But Sebastian knew that over the past year the two had nevertheless become friends—good friends. And Kat had always been fiercely loyal to her friends.
Yet Sebastian couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more to her concern, a subtle nuance that eluded him.
He said, “You told me once that Yates has evidence against Jarvis—evidence of something that would ruin him if it became known.”
“Yes.”
“It should be in Jarvis’s best interest to see that no harm comes to Yates. If anyone has the power to get the charges against him dropped, it’s Jarvis. So why hasn’t he done it?”
She drew in a deep, troubled breath, a subtle betrayal that was unusual for her.
“What?” he asked, watching her.
“Jarvis visited Yates in his cell last night. Yates says he came to reassure him that he was in no danger.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
She shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line as she turned her horse back onto Bishopsgate. “Yates used to think the evidence he has against Jarvis could protect us both. Only, I’m not so sure.”
Sebastian knew a sense of profound disquiet. If given a choice between saving Kat and saving himself, he had little doubt which Yates would choose.
But all he said was, “How well did you know Eisler?”
“I didn’t. But I’ve been asking around. Word on the street has it he was killed by a Parisian named Jacques Collot. Collot likes to claim he fled France during the Revolution because his monarchist principles were revolted by the excesses of republican and democratic fervor. But from what I’m hearing, the truth is probably considerably less flattering.”
Sebastian frowned. “What was his connection to Eisler?”
“Let’s just say Eisler wasn’t exactly careful about the origins of the jewels he bought. He also had a tendency to cheat the people he did business with.”
“You think he cheated Collot?”
She drew up outside the Black Devil again, where her groom was rushing to finish eating a paper-wrapped sausage he’d bought from a nearby cart. “They say Collot was heard raging about Eisler in a tavern just two nights ago—swore next time he saw the man he was going to kill him.”
“Drunken talk is cheap.”
“True. But it’s a place to start, isn’t it?”
“It is, yes. Do you know where I can find this man?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
He dropped lightly to the paving, then paused with one hand on the seat’s high railing. He had the unsettling sense that there were unseen but powerful forces at work behind all this. Powerful and dangerous. He glanced over at her groom. “Is your man armed?”
She pressed her lips into a thin, tight line and shook her head. “I refuse to allow Jarvis to frighten me.”
“Jarvis frightens me, Kat. Please, just . . . be careful.”
Returning to Brook Street, Sebastian sent for his valet and asked without preamble, “Ever hear of a somewhat unsavory Frenchman named Jacques Collot?”
Most gentlemen’s gentlemen would be outraged by their employer’s suggestion that they consorted with or were in any way familiar with the members of London’s vast criminal class. But Jules Calhoun was not your ordinary gentleman’s gentleman. Small and lithe, with a boyish shock of flaxen hair and a roguish smile, he was a genius at repairing the ravages the pursuit of murderers could at times inflict on Sebastian’s wardrobe. But he also possessed certain other skills useful to a man with Sebastian’s interests—skills that had their origins in the fact that he began life in one of the worst flash houses in London.
“I have heard of him, my lord,” said Calhoun. “I believe he arrived in London some ten or fifteen years ago. But I can’t say I know much about him.”
“Know where he lives?”
“No. But I can find out.”
Several hours later, Sebastian was seated at the desk in his library with Knox’s manuscript open before him when Hero came in.
She still wore her emerald green carriage dress, although the plume in her jaunty hat was now sadly drooping, for it had come on to rain. “Ah, there you are,” she said, taking off her hat to frown down at the bedraggled feather.
“So, did your crossing sweep talk to you?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
“He did. And you would not believe some of the things he told me.” She came to peer over his shoulder at the manuscript. “I didn’t know you read Hebrew.”