For one long, intense moment, the man’s gaze met hers across the square, and Hero felt her mouth go dry and an unpleasant sensation crawl across her skin. He had an oddly uneven face, with a full-lipped, crooked mouth and one eye that seemed slightly larger than the other. The sun was just cresting the rooftops of the decrepit seventeenth-century houses that lined the square and spilling golden light across the ragged, raucous crowd. The slanting sunlight caught the smoke from the charcoal fires so that, for one eerie moment, the air took on a hellish glow. Then the sun inched higher, and the illusion was broken.
“How long has he been watching us?” she asked Lucky. To her knowledge, she had never seen the man before and could not imagine who he might be.
“I can’t say fer sure,” said Lucky. “But I noticed ’im right after we got ’ere.”
She studied the unknown man’s strange profile. He was perhaps thirty-five or more years of age, his straight black hair worn long enough to hang over his collar, and a two-or three-days’ growth of beard shadowed his face. He kept his head deliberately turned away. But she had no doubt that he was still aware of her, that she was the reason he was here, now.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think ’e followed ye ’ere,” said Lucky. “Only, why would some feller be followin’ ye?”
“I don’t know,” said Hero, shoving her notebook and pencil back into her reticule. “But I intend to ask him.”
Gathering her carriage gown in both fists to lift the hem clear of the muck-strewn paving stones, Hero strode across the square, weaving around weathered, half-rotten stalls and plowing determinedly through the throngs of earnestly haggling purchasers and sellers. She had almost reached the step up to the piazza when the black-booted man pushed away from the pillar and melted into the crowd.
She tried to follow him, shoving past sieves piled high with apples and a thick mass of gawkers gathered around what looked like an upside-down umbrella filled with ribald prints. But by the time she reached the corner of James Street, he had disappeared.
She stared out over the noisy sea of donkeys and barrows and ragged men and women clogging the lane. “Blast,” she whispered beneath her breath.
“Who was he?” asked Lucky as he caught up with her.
But Hero only shook her head, conscious of an unpleasant tingling in her fingertips and a sensation of disquiet that would not be stilled.
Chapter 15
S ebastian was sitting down to a solitary breakfast after a hard ride in the park when he heard the distant peal of the front bell, followed by a young woman’s voice in the hall.
“A Miss Anne Preston to see you, my lord,” said Morey, appearing in the doorway. “She says it’s urgent.”
“Please, show her in.”
Stanley Preston’s daughter came in with a quick step and a determined, almost fierce expression that faded to chagrin as she drew up just inside the doorway. “I’ve interrupted your breakfast. I do beg your pardon. I’ll go—”
He pushed to his feet. “No. Please, come in and sit down. May I offer you some tea? Toast, perhaps?”
“Nothing, thank you.” She took the seat he indicated, both hands gripping her reticule in her lap as she leaned forward. “I’m sorry for coming so early, but I spoke to Jane Austen last night, and she says she told you about Hugh—I mean, Captain Wyeth. I . . . I don’t think she realized that when you heard about Father’s argument with Mr. Austen, you might leap to some unfortunate conclusions.”
Sebastian suspected that Jane Austen had been perfectly aware of the implications of what she’d told him. But all he said was, “Conclusions about what?”
“About H—Captain Wyeth, and Father.”
Sebastian reached for his tankard and calmly took a sip of ale, his gaze one of polite interest.
When he remained silent, she said in a rush, “I won’t deny that Father was displeased when he learned Captain Wyeth had returned to London. But there was never any confrontation between them. Truly there wasn’t.” She looked at him with a pinched, earnest face, as if she could somehow will him to believe her.
She was an appallingly bad liar.
Sebastian cut himself a slice of ham. “Yet your father quarreled with Mr. Austen over a simple statement of regret voiced by the man’s wife from her sickbed?”
“Father never could abide having his judgments questioned or being told he was wrong—about anything.”
“Oh? And what, precisely, led your friend to change her mind about Captain Wyeth?”
Anne Preston threaded her reticule strings between her fingers. “When she opposed the match between Hugh and me six years ago, Eliza was very much governed by material considerations. She thought at the time she had my best interests at heart. But . . .”
“Yes?” prompted Sebastian.
“She says her illness has altered her perception, that she now sincerely regrets the part she once played in helping to deprive me of the happiness I could have enjoyed all these years.”
“Your father found that objectionable?”
“Father always hoped to see us—that is, my brother and me—marry well. It was extraordinarily important to him.”
“So Captain Wyeth has renewed his quest for your hand?
“Oh, no. No. We . . . we’ve only met a few times since his return to London—as old acquaintances. Nothing more.”