Sebastian pressed the knife blade against his throat.
Flynn’s eyes widened and he swallowed hard, blood dripping off his chin from his broken nose and mouth. “Don’t kill me.”
Sebastian shook his head, his lips curling away from his teeth. “Name one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
Flynn’s chest jerked on a ragged, quickly indrawn breath. “I can give you Oliphant.”
The French overture to Haydn’s last piano sonata thundered with an energetic and passionate verve as Sebastian threaded his way through Lady Farningham’s crowded reception rooms. It was her second musical evening of the Season, and it seemed that all of fashionable London had come to hear her latest Italian virtuoso. The more intent listeners were seated in the rows of gilded chairs drawn up before the pianoforte. But most of the guests circulated freely, drinking and eating and chatting in small clusters.
Sinclair, Lord Oliphant, was standing beside one of the ornate pilasters in the drawing room, his gaze fixed on the pianist, when Sebastian walked up behind his former colonel and said quietly, “I have Diggory Flynn. He’s willing to testify that you paid him to kill Jamie Knox.”
Oliphant kept his eyes on the musician, not even bothering to turn his head as he said, “I never did any such thing.”
Lady Oliphant was too far away to hear their words, but she looked over at Sebastian and frowned pointedly.
Sebastian kept his voice low. “True; you paid him to kill me. But Knox died.”
“Diggory Flynn is scum. No one will believe him. Do you honestly think a jury would take the word of a smuggler against that of a peer of the realm?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Like Oliphant, Sebastian kept his attention seemingly focused on the performer. “The thing is, you see, your man shot at me tonight with my wife and son standing beside me. Jarvis’s daughter and grandson. The only reason I haven’t already killed you is because they weren’t hurt. But don’t expect Jarvis to be swayed by such technicalities. You’ll be lucky if you live long enough to stand trial.” He watched as that perpetual, confident smile slid slowly from Oliphant’s face. “I suppose you could try to run. But I don’t think you’ll get far.”
He bowed his head toward Oliphant’s scowling wife. “My lady,” he said, and turned to walk out of the room and out of the house.
As he descended the front steps, he noticed one of the tall, dark-haired former hussar officers employed by Jarvis waiting across the rain-drenched street. For a moment, their gazes met. Then he heard Tom’s shout.
“Gov’nor! Oy, gov’nor.”
He could see the tiger threading his way through the crowd of gawkers that always formed around such events.
“Gov’nor,” said the boy, struggling to catch his breath as he skidded to a halt at the base of the steps. He held out a somewhat grubby calling card. “A lad just brung this from Bucket Lane!”
It was one of Sebastian’s own cards. He flipped it over to see that someone had written on the back in a childish hand.
Plees help. Juba
“I think it’s a trap,” said Tom.
They were in a hackney headed toward Fish Street Hill. The rain had eased up for the moment, but water still dripped from the eaves of the mean houses and shops they passed, and a cold wind buffeted the old carriage.
“Of course it’s a trap,” said Sebastian, his gaze on the soaring tower of the church of St. Magnus that loomed over the bridgehead and Billingsgate Market. He’d expected Knightly to try to silence him. And he had worried about the safety of Juba and Banjo. What he hadn’t foreseen was that the killer would use the woman and child to bait a trap for Sebastian.
He wondered if life really spun in circles, or if it was simply some trick of the human mind that made people see patterns where none truly existed. The last time women and children had been put at risk because of him, he had failed to save them. He’d spent the last three years seeking some sort of redemption for that failure and had found a measure of solace in his efforts on behalf of other victims of human evil.
But now it was happening all over again.
Tom shook his head. “So why ye goin’ there?”
“Because if I don’t, Juba and her son will die.”
Lit only by the occasional glimmer of a tallow candle showing through a grimy window, Bucket Lane lay dark and wet and deserted beneath the stormy sky.
“What we gonna do?” whispered Tom as they slipped down the lane to draw up in a shadowy doorway.