“Cut line,” said Sebastian, swinging to face him. “You can answer the question, or I can ask it of Louisa Hope. Which do you prefer?”
Beresford met his gaze, then looked away, his lower jaw thrust out as he exhaled a long, painful breath. “Louisa doesn’t know anything about any of this,” he said quietly.
“Why Eisler? Why not go to Hope?”
Beresford continued walking, his soft blue eyes fixed on the wet pavement before them. “I did. The first time.”
“Go on.”
“It all happened one night right after I first came to London. I fell in with some friends from Oxford. They wanted to try a gaming hell near Portland Place, so I went with them. The stakes were . . . high. Almost before I knew it, I’d lost a thousand pounds.” He gave a nearly hysterical laugh. “A thousand pounds! My father only clears twelve hundred pounds in a good year.”
“So you went to Hope?”
Beresford nodded. “He behaved remarkably well, under the circumstances. Read me a lecture, of course, but nothing I didn’t deserve. When he handed me the money, he warned me there would be no second time.”
“Don’t tell me you went back to the same hell again?”
Beresford’s lips crimped into a painfully thin line. “Hope told me I didn’t need to repay him. But . . . it didn’t sit right with me to just take his money. The problem was, I knew the only way I could ever get my hands on that much blunt would be to win it.”
“How much did you lose the second time?”
“Five hundred pounds. I was winning at first—”
“You always do.”
“But then my luck turned. Quite suddenly and rather disastrously. I did have the sense to quit. Only, not soon enough.”
“If you’d had any sense, you wouldn’t have gone back there at all.”
Beresford’s eyes flashed with resentment. “You think I don’t know that now? I came damned close to putting a pistol in my mouth. There was no way I could go to Hope and admit I’d lost another five hundred pounds.”
“So you went to Eisler instead. How the devil did you imagine you would ever repay him? Were you planning to take to the high toby next?”
The rat-a-tat-tat of a drum sounded from the top of the street, accompanied by the tramp of marching feet. Beresford glanced toward the sound, a deep stain of shame spreading across his fair cheeks. “He . . . I . . . That is to say, I agreed to perform certain services for him.”
Sebastian was beginning to understand at least part of Perlman’s motivation in sending him to Beresford. “You mean, you undertook to regularly provide him with whores.”
Beresford’s eyes widened, his throat working painfully as he swallowed. “How did you know?”
“Call it a good guess. Did you provide Eisler with a whore last Sunday?”
“Sunday? No. But I know he had at least one other person doing the same thing I was.”
Sebastian studied the younger man’s handsome, strained face. He struck Sebastian as earnest and basically decent, if dangerously inexperienced and naive. For the most part, he was probably telling the truth.
But only for the most part.
Sebastian said, “Where were you that evening?”
“You mean when Eisler was shot? I was with Matt Tyson, at his rooms in St. James’s. We were drinking wine . . . playing a friendly game of whist . . . that sort of thing.”
Not for the first time, Sebastian found himself wondering at the friendship between the older, battle-hardened lieutenant and this young, fresh-faced Irish boy barely down from Oxford. “How long have you known Tyson?”
“Six weeks or so, I suppose. We met at a musical evening given by a mutual acquaintance.” His gaze darted back to where his cousin had appeared in the doorway of the milliner’s shop, her head turned as she conversed with someone behind her. “There’s Louisa. I really must—”
“One more question,” said Sebastian as a column of soldiers swung into view, red uniforms clean and new, brass buttons glinting in a gleam of sunshine. “What can you tell me about the blue diamond Eisler was selling for the Hopes?”
The younger man’s features slackened in a convincing expression of puzzlement. “Blue diamond?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about it. Henry Philip Hope is the one who collects gems, and I’ve only met him a few times.”
“It’s possible Thomas Hope purchased this diamond five or six years ago, perhaps for your cousin.”
Beresford looked thoughtful. “I know he gave Louisa some ridiculously expensive pieces when he was courting her—I remember my mother referring to them rather sardonically as ‘bribes.’ But I couldn’t say exactly what they were. I never saw them. And Louisa actually prefers to wear smaller, more delicate jewelry.”
Louisa Hope’s voice floated across to them. “Blair?”
Beresford gave a quick, flustered bow. “Excuse me. Please.”