They bowled along in silence until they’d passed the Hyde Park Turnpike and were weaving their way through the quiet, rain-drenched streets of Mayfair. Then Tom said suddenly, “If ye didn’t like ’im, then why ye care that somebody offed ’im?”
“Because even those who own West Indies plantations don’t deserve to be brutally murdered. Apart from which, I find the idea of sharing my city with someone who goes around cutting off the heads of his enemies somewhat disconcerting.”
“Discon-what?”
“Disconcerting. It makes me feel . . . uncomfortable.”
“I reckon it was a Frenchman,” said Tom, who had a profound suspicion of foreigners in general and the French in particular. “They’re always cuttin’ off folks’ ’eads.”
“An interesting theory that certainly merits consideration.” Sebastian drew up before the front steps of his Brook Street town house. The oil lamps mounted on either side of the door cast a soft pool of golden light across the wet paving, but the house itself was dark and quiet, its inhabitants still sleeping. “Take care of the horses, then go to bed and stay there. It’s nearly dawn.”
Tom scrambled forward to take the reins as Sebastian dropped lightly to the pavement. “Ye gonna ’ave a lie-in?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t reckon I will,” said Tom, his chin jutting forward mulishly.
Sebastian grunted. The lad’s grasp of the concept of obedience was still rather shaky.
He watched Tom drive off toward the mews, then turned to enter the house. Moving quietly, he stripped off his clothes in the dressing room and slipped into bed beside Hero. He didn’t want to wake her. But the need to feel her warm, vital body against his was too strong. He carefully slid one arm around her waist and pressed his chest against the long line of her back.
Her hand came up to rest on his, and in the darkness he saw her lips curve into a soft smile as she shifted so she could look at him over her shoulder. “You were a long time,” she said. “Was it as bad as Sir Henry’s message led you to expect?”
“Worse.” He buried his face in the dark, fragrant fall of her hair. “Go back to sleep.”
“Can you sleep?”
“In a while.”
“I can help,” she said huskily, her hand sliding low over his naked hip, his breath catching in his throat as she turned in his arms and covered his mouth with hers.
He came downstairs the next morning to find Hero in the entryway wearing a hunter green pelisse and velvet hat with three plums. She was pulling on a pair of soft kid gloves but paused when she looked up and saw him.
“Well, good morning,” she said, her eyes gently smiling at him. “I didn’t expect to see you up this early.”
“It’s not early.”
She shifted to adjust her hat in the looking glass over the console. “It is when you’ve been up most of the night.”
She was an extraordinarily tall woman, nearly as tall as Sebastian, with hair of a rich medium brown and fine gray eyes that sparkled with an intelligence of almost frightening intensity. She had the kind of looks more often described as handsome than pretty, with a strong chin, a wide mouth, and an aquiline nose she had inherited from her father, Lord Jarvis, a distant cousin of the mad old King George and the real power behind the Prince of Wales’s fragile regency. Once, Jarvis had tried to have Sebastian killed—and undoubtedly still would, if he found it expedient.
“Another interview?” he asked, watching her tilt her hat just so. “What is it this time? Dustmen? Chimney sweeps? Flower girls?”
“Costermongers.”
“Ah.”
She was writing a series of articles on London’s working poor that she intended to eventually gather together into a book. It was a project that disgusted her father, both because he considered such activities unsuitable for a female, and because the entire undertaking smacked of the kind of radicalism he abhorred. But then, Hero had never allowed her father’s expectations or prejudices to constrain her.
She said, “Stanley Preston’s murder is in all the morning papers. Was he truly decapitated?”
“He was.”
She pivoted slowly to face him again, her eyes wide and still.
He said, “Do you have a moment? There’s something I’d like you to see.”
“Of course.” Slipping off her pelisse, she followed him into the library, where he’d left the ancient metal strap on his desk.
“I found this not far from Preston’s body.” He handed her the length of lead and gave her a brief description of the scene at the bridge.
“‘King Charles, 1648,’” she read, then looked up at him. “I don’t understand. What is it?”
“I could be wrong, but I’ve seen strips of metal like this before, wrapped around old coffins.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting this came from the coffin of Charles I?”