The man’s grin widened. “She’s a fine-looking woman, your wife. Very fine-looking.”
A powerful surge of fear-fueled rage coursed through Sebastian. He slammed the man back against the brick wall of the house behind him, one forearm pressed up tight against his skinny throat. “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
The man shook his head, his grin still eerily in place. “Didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Why the bloody hell do you want to know who I am?”
The man’s eyes squeezed shut as he gave a strange, half-strangled laugh. “I saw you. Saw you coming out of his house.”
“Whose house?”
The man flattened his hands against the brick wall behind him, his stringy muscles tense, his fingers splayed. Then he opened his eyes, and they were like the eyes of a child or of the very old, when the mind begins to lose its ability to comprehend and simply stares out at the world in helpless confusion and need. “Oh, I can’t tell you that.”
Sebastian took a step back and let the man go. “You stay away from my wife. Is that understood? You stay away from my house, and you stay away from my wife. I see you hanging around here again, I’ll have you taken up by the watch.”
He realized the man was no longer looking at him but at something beyond him. Turning, Sebastian saw Hero calmly crossing the street toward him, the hem of her delicate white muslin gown lifted above the mud-and manure-strewn paving.
When Sebastian looked back, the man was gone.
“So, who is he?” Hero asked, her gaze following the skinny man’s retreating figure as she stepped up onto the flagway beside him. A gust of wind blew the rain in stinging, swirling sheets around them.
“Someone who belongs in Bedlam.”
She brought her gaze back to Sebastian. “Oh? You mean like a man who charges out into the rain with neither hat nor cloak?”
He swiped the water out of his eyes and looked at his wife. Rain dripped from her wet hair, ran down her cheeks, soaked the wet muslin of her elegant gown so that it clung to every swell and hollow of her magnificent body. He said, “You mean like you?”
Her face lit up with surprised delight and she let out a peal of laughter that tilted her head up to the sky.
The rain eased up later that evening, only to sweep back in just after midnight.
Lying awake in his wife’s bed, Sebastian could see streaks of strange green lightning illuminating the churning clouds that pressed low over the fetid alleyways and rain-lashed docks to the east. There came a moment’s breath-stealing pause; then the rumble of the thunder began, building louder and louder into a window-rattling crescendo that bled seamlessly into memories he would rather have forgotten.
He sensed a subtle shift beside him, heard a whisper of movement. A soft, warm hand crept across the bare flesh of his chest. Hero said, “You’re not sleeping.”
He smiled into the darkness. “And you are?”
She rolled over to press her long body against his side as he brought his arms down to gather her to him.
She said, “You’re worried about that man, the one who was watching the house.”
He stroked his hand down her back and over the swell of her hip. “I keep thinking I’ve seen him before, only I can’t place where.”
“A beggar on a street corner, perhaps? A face glimpsed in the desperate crowds outside St. Martin’s poorhouse?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t think he’s a beggar.”
“You said yourself he sounds as if he belongs in Bedlam.”
“That doesn’t mean he isn’t somehow involved in Daniel Eisler’s death.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
“Why was he here, now, watching the house? Watching you? Not me. You.”
She propped herself up on one elbow so she could look down at him. “I can take care of myself.”
Her words echoed those Kat had said to him earlier that day. Only, in that instance she had been referring to the threat posed by Jarvis . . . Hero’s own father.
He caught the dark fall of hair curtaining her face and swept it back with his splayed fingers. He had seen her shoot a man point-blank in the chest and barely register any reaction, either horror or remorse. There was a hard edge to this woman that he knew came to her from her father, Jarvis. It was leavened by her sense of justice and a measure of compassion for the suffering of those less fortunate that Jarvis had never experienced. But Sebastian knew she could still kill without hesitation or compunction to protect herself or others, just as he knew that none of that might be enough to keep her safe.
He said, “We’re all vulnerable. Especially when dealing with a madman.”
She was silent a moment, her face solemn, a frown digging a furrow between her eyebrows. “Do you think I don’t worry about you?”
“That’s not—”
“Not the same? Because you are a man and I am a woman?”