Sebastian stood beside the Thames, his gaze on the swollen brown waters of the river spreading out before him. The newly budding elms that edged Cheyne Walk cast dappled patterns of light and shadow across the greening grass, and the strengthening spring sun felt warm on his shoulders. But the air was cold and damp.
Have I seen you before? Priss Mulligan had said. You look more’n a bit like that rifleman keeps a tavern just off Bishopsgate. Got those same nasty yellow eyes, he does.
Sebastian was only too familiar with Jamie Knox, a onetime rifleman who owned the Black Devil near St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate. The resemblance between the two men—one an earl’s heir, the other the son of a Shropshire barmaid—was as uncanny as it was inexplicable.
Those unfamiliar with the Earl of Hendon might simply assume that Knox must be one of the earl’s by-blows. But Sebastian knew better. Knew that Knox was no more Hendon’s son than was Sebastian himself.
He narrowed his eyes against the fitful sunlight glinting off the water, felt the breeze off the river, icy against his face. He didn’t want to reopen the old wounds, didn’t want to confront the unanswered questions associated with the mysterious rifleman. But the ties between Jamie Knox and the world of smuggling were murky but indisputable.
It was past time to pay a visit to the Black Devil.
Chapter 29
T he Black Devil stood in a narrow cobbled lane just off Bishopsgate, not far, Sebastian realized, from the Houndsditch shop of Priss Mulligan. Popular with the area’s tradesmen and apprentices, it had half-timbered walls, twisted brick chimneys, and a high-gabled roof that marked it as a relic of a bygone era.
He paused for a moment on the far side of the lane, his gaze traveling over the tavern’s ancient, diamond-paned windows and the cracked wooden sign depicting a horned black devil dancing against the flames of hell. Then he crossed the street to push open the taproom door.
The interior of the tavern was as little altered as the exterior, its low ceiling supported by dark, heavy beams, its sunken flagged floor strewn with sawdust to absorb spills, the oak-paneled walls blackened by centuries of smoke from the vast stone hearth. The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and ale and workingmen’s sweat.
“You,” said the lovely dark-haired young barmaid, her exotic, almond-shaped eyes narrowed with animosity as she watched him walk up to her.
“Yes, me,” Sebastian said cheerfully, resting one forearm along the bar’s scarred surface as he surveyed the crowded room. Jamie Knox was nowhere in sight. “Where is he?”
“What you want with him? You’re trouble, you are. I knowed it from the first time I seen you. You want a pint, I’ll give you a pint. Otherwise, why don’t you jist take yourself off?”
Sebastian turned his head to meet her angry gaze. “I’ll take a pint.”
“Make that two pints, Pippa,” said Jamie Knox. “And bring them back here, if you will.”
Sebastian shifted to find the tavern owner leaning against the doorframe of a small back room that served as a kind of office. He was built tall and leanly muscled, taller even than Sebastian, with hair of a slightly darker shade. But the high-boned cheeks and gently curving lips were eerily the same as Sebastian’s, as were the strange yellow eyes.
Like the devil who danced on the tavern’s painted sign, he was dressed all in black—black coat and trousers, black waistcoat, black cravat; only his shirt was white. His origins were as murky as his history. The son of a poor, unmarried barmaid, Knox claimed not to know the identity of his father. Once, he’d been a rifleman with the 145th, a man famed for his eerily keen eyesight and animal-like hearing and quick reflexes. Discharged when his unit was reduced after the disaster at Corunna, he’d returned to England, some said to take to the High Toby as a highwayman . . . although there were also those who whispered he’d acquired the Black Devil simply by murdering its previous owner.
The two men had first encountered each other some months before. They had never directly addressed the startling and inexplicable physical resemblance between them, never openly speculated on its possible causes or implications. But the awareness of it was always there, for both men a source of antagonism and an unwanted but undeniable bond.
For Sebastian, it was an unwelcome reminder of a painful truth about his own paternity that had come close to destroying him. Yet it was also, beguilingly, a tantalizing clue to the identity of the unknown man who had bequeathed to him the same golden eyes and uncanny, wolflike senses that Knox possessed.
And Knox himself? Not for the first time, Sebastian found himself wondering how the rifleman viewed the unknown relationship between them.