“Ye thinkin’ this hussar cap’n might be the one done for the cove at Bloody Bridge?” asked Tom as they rounded the corner onto Brook Street.
“I’d say he’s certainly a likely suspect.” The heavy cloud cover had already robbed most of the light from the day, so that the reflected glow of the newly lit streetlamps spilled like liquid gold across the dark, wet pavement. Sebastian guided his horses around a dowager’s cabriole drawn up at the front steps of a nearby town house. And then, for reasons he could not have explained, he was suddenly, intensely aware of the solid length of the leather reins running through his hands, of the throbbing of the sparrows coming in to roost on the housetops above, and of the scattered drops of cold rain blown by a gust of wind against his face as he lifted his head to study the jagged line of roofs looming above.
“What?” asked Tom, watching him.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said, reining in hard just as an unseen force knocked the top hat from his head, and a rifle shot cracked from somewhere in the gathering gloom.
Chapter 12
“Get down,” Sebastian shouted at Tom.
“’Oly ’ell,” yelped the tiger, tumbling from his perch as Sebastian fought to bring the squealing, plunging pair under control. Then, rather than duck for cover down the nearest area steps, the boy leapt to the frantic horses’ heads.
“God damn it!” swore Sebastian. “Are you trying to get yourself shot? Get out of here!”
“Easy lads, easy,” crooned the tiger.
The whirl of a watchman’s rattle sounded over the horses’ frightened snorts and pounding hooves. “I say, I say,” blustered an aging, fleshy man in a bulky greatcoat as he trotted up, his lantern swaying wildly, one arm thrust straight above his head as he spun his wooden rattle furiously round and round. “Was that a shot? That was a shot, yes?”
“That was a shot,” said Sebastian.
More people were spilling into the street—slack-faced butlers and elegant gentlemen in tails and one grimly determined footman brandishing a blunderbuss.
“Merciful heavens,” said the watchman, swallowing hard. “Whoever heard of such a thing? In Brook Street, of all places! Where did it come from?” He turned in a slow circle with his lantern held high, as if its feeble light might somehow illuminate the would-be assassin.
Sebastian finally brought his frightened horses to a stand. “It came from the roof of that row of houses. But I suspect the shooter is long gone by now.”
“Look at this!” said a skinny youth in silken breeches as he held up Sebastian’s beaver hat with one white-gloved finger thrust through a neat hole in the crown. “That was close!”
“’Oly ’ell,” whispered Tom again, his hand sliding slowly down the nearest horse’s quivering hide.
Sebastian could hear Simon’s colicky wails even before he reached number forty-one Brook Street.
“At it again, is he?” said Sebastian, handing Morey his hat and driving coat.
A harassed expression drifted across the majordomo’s normally carefully controlled countenance. At close range, the child’s screams were painful. “I’m afraid so, my lord.” He laid the driving coat over one arm, then froze when he got a better look at the elegant, high-crowned beaver hat in his hands. “Is that a bullet hole, my lord?”
Sebastian yanked off his driving gloves. “It is. And it was a new hat too. Calhoun is going to be devastated.” He glanced up as another howl drifted down from above. “How long has he been at it?”
“A good while, I’m afraid. He started early this evening.”
“Well, at least we know there’s nothing wrong with his lungs,” said Sebastian, taking the stairs to the nursery two at a time.
He was halfway to the third floor when he met Claire Bisette on her way down to make a fresh bottle of sweetened dill and fennel water. Hero might have refused to employ a wet nurse, but she’d welcomed Claire into their household with relief. An impoverished French émigrée in her early thirties, Claire was both older and considerably better educated than the young, ignorant country girls who typically served as nursemaids.
“What set him off?” he asked Claire.
She paused to push a stray lock of light brown hair out of her face with the back of one delicate wrist. “Who knows? Believe it or not, he’s better now than he was.”
Climbing to the top of the stairs, Sebastian found Hero walking back and forth before the nursery fire, the child’s rigid body held so that her shoulder pressed against his stomach, his little fists clenched tight, his face red and distorted with his howls. At the sound of Sebastian’s step, she turned, her quietly exasperated gaze meeting his.
“Here,” said Sebastian, and walked forward to take his screaming son into his arms.
“I showed the section of inscribed lead to my father,” Hero said sometime later, in a quiet moment when Simon dozed fitfully against her.