It was a gift, his mother had told him, this catlike ability to see clearly in all but the complete absence of any light, to hear sounds too subtle or high-pitched for most human ears. The trait was shared by no one else in his family, and he still remembered the look on his mother’s face when she first discovered the strange, almost animalistic quality of his senses.
She’d come upon him unexpectedly one evening, when he was curled up on a bench in the summerhouse reading a book long after the sun had set. He realized now that she had surely known then, even if Sebastian himself had not, that this gift came to him from his father. . . .
The father who was not the Earl of Hendon.
He pushed the memory from his thoughts and quietly mounted the shattered steps to the terrace, stepping carefully to avoid the telltale clatter of broken stones shifting beneath his boots. The rows of ratty wooden cages were still there to the left of the door, their forlorn feathered occupants huddled against a damp wind that carried with it a foul stench of neglect and misery. Nearly every food bowl was empty, the water vessels scummed.
Moving purposefully from cage to cage, he quickly unlatched one door after the other, rattling the slats of those whose occupants appeared too weakened or morose to seize the freedom offered them. In a whirl of wings, they rose against the night sky, first sparrows, doves, and larks; then, once the smaller birds had flown to safety, the goshawks and owls. Sebastian stood at last before the cage of the disgruntled, long-haired black cat, which looked up at him with slitted green eyes. Sebastian swung open the cage door, its hinges squealing loud enough to make him wince.
“Well, go on, then,” he whispered when the cat remained motionless. “What are you waiting for? An invitation from the King?”
The cat blinked.
Sebastian tipped the cage forward, upending the cat, which dropped lightly onto the pavement beside him with an indignant yowl.
“Shhh,” hissed Sebastian.
The cat streaked into the night, its ridiculously long, bushy tail lashing back and forth.
Sebastian watched it for a moment, ears straining for any sound that might indicate that his presence had been detected. The wind gusted up again, thrashing the creaking limbs of the old elms.
He eased the knife from his boot and crossed to the back door.
The gap between the door and its frame was not as wide as he’d hoped, but it was enough. Slipping the blade through the opening close against the frame, he pressed down until the hard steel of the knife sank into the softer iron of the bolt with enough purchase to enable him to slide the bolt a fraction to the right. Then he freed the blade, eased it in close to the frame again, and pressed down.
He did this again and again, working the bolt back bit by bit. The work was excruciatingly slow. It would have been much easier to simply knock out the bars on one of the windows and break the glass, but he preferred to leave as little sign of his entry as possible. He was aware of a soft patter as the rain started up again, and the distant cry of the watch shouting, “Two o’clock on a rainy night and all is well.” Then the bolt cleared the frame with a soft click, and the door creaked inward perhaps six inches.
Sebastian pushed it open wider, took a step, and nearly tripped as something warm and furry threaded between his legs.
“Will you go away?” he whispered.
The cat let out a soft mew.
Bloody hell.
Slipping the knife back into its sheath, Sebastian stepped over the cat, then quickly shut the door in its face.
“Meow,” complained the cat, caught on the outside.
With the door closed, the corridor lay in near total darkness, the only illumination a faint glow that spilled through the archway from the windows of the vast hall beyond. The rows of heavy paintings on the walls and stacks of fine furniture loomed out of heavy shadows. The smell of mold and rot hung thick in the air.
Moving quietly, he opened the first door to his right and found himself staring at a dining room that looked as if it hadn’t been used for its intended purpose in decades. The velvet curtains at the windows hung in tatters; a long Jacobean table and a dozen chairs with barley-turned legs, so darkened by centuries of smoke and old wax as to be nearly black, stood in the center of the room. All were so buried beneath piles of furniture and stacks of paintings and objets d’art that it would take a man a week to search the room, clearing a path for himself as he went.
Closing the door, Sebastian turned to the opposite side of the corridor, only to draw up short at the sight of a pair of green eyes gleaming at him from out of the darkness.
“How the devil did you get in here?” he whispered to the cat. Then a waft of wind scented by wet pavement and sodden earth caused the heavy door from the terrace to shift with a loud creak, and he realized that, without the bolt, it had swung open again.