“And the captain?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“I’d meant to let the partisans have him too. But when I saw him again, I couldn’t stop myself. I . . . beat him to death.” He realized he’d clenched his fist and forced himself to open his hand. “I tell myself he deserved to die. But what I did was little short of murder. And when it was over, I found I had no pleasure in his killing. The truth is, I live with his death and the deaths of his men as surely as I live with the deaths of the innocents of Santa Iria.”
“It was war.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was revenge. Those women and children deserve justice. But there is no real justice in murder.”
He saw her sad smile, the almost imperceptible shake of her head. She drew the line between right and wrong in a different place than he. It was one of the ways in which they differed, one of the ways in which she was very much her father’s daughter.
He touched her face, ran his fingertips along the curve of her cheek. “I believe those who die violently at the hands of others deserve justice. We owe them that. The problem is, by going after ruthless men—and women—I run the risk of putting you in danger. You and Simon too.”
He told her then what he’d learned from Knox, about the threat Priss Mulligan might pose to them all. He said, “Promise me you’ll be careful?”
She took his hand in hers, pressed a kiss to his palm. “I knew what you did when I married you, Devlin. It’s a part of who you are—a part of what I love about you. I won’t try to pretend that I don’t worry something might happen to you, because I do—the same way I worry about Simon catching a fever or coming down with the flux. But I refuse to be ruled by my fears.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “As for Simon and me . . . we’re both constantly surrounded by a small army of servants. I don’t think we’re exactly vulnerable.”
He wanted to say, Everyone is vulnerable.
But some fears were best left unspoken.
Chapter 30
Friday, 26 March
T he next morning, Sebastian drove toward the Tower of London, to Paul Gibson’s surgery.
He left Tom to water the horses at the fountain near the ancient fortress’s walls and slipped through the shadowy, narrow passage that led to the unkempt yard at the rear of the Irishman’s old stone house. Only, this time, in place of Gibson’s throaty tenor warbling some Irish drinking song, he could hear a Frenchwoman’s soft, clear voice singing, “Madame à sa tour monte, mironton, mironton, mirontaine . . .”
He reached the open doorway to find Alexi Sauvage bent over the naked, eviscerated body of Douglas Sterling laid out on the stone slab before her. She had a leather apron tied over her simple gown and a bloody scalpel in one hand and was singing softly to herself, “Madame à sa tour monte si haut qu’elle peut—”
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. He knew she had trained as a doctor in Italy, knew she must have done this sort of thing before. But finding her here was still disconcerting.
A lock of flame red hair fell across her eyes as she looked up at him. She pushed it back with one bent wrist. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Where’s Gibson?”
She set aside the scalpel with a clatter. She was an attractive woman, with pale, delicate skin and a high-bridged nose and brown eyes, dark now with an old hatred. Sebastian might have had a good reason for killing the man she’d once loved, but he knew she had never forgiven him for it.
“Gibson is”—she hesitated, then finished by saying—“not well today.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, your friend is an opium eater. How he managed to meet his responsibilities with even a semblance of normalcy before I arrived is beyond me. But I don’t think he could have kept it up much longer.”
Sebastian studied her set, angry face. “You said you could help him. Yet you have not done so.”
She reached for a rag and wiped her hands. “As long as he suffers the phantom pains from his missing leg, he will never be able to free himself of the opium.”
“You said you can help him with that too.”
“Only if he allows it.”
“Why would he not?”
“Perhaps you should try asking him that yourself.” She picked up her scalpel again. “Although you’re not likely to get a coherent response from him at the moment.”
Sebastian nodded to the decapitated body between them. “What have you discovered?”
“Not much. For an old man, Douglas Sterling was as healthy as an ox. He’d likely have lived another ten or more years, if someone hadn’t stabbed him in the back and cut off his head.”
“In that order?”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain?”
“Are you suggesting I’m incompetent?”
I’m suggesting you’re probably not as good at this as Gibson, he thought. But all he said was, “Is there anything that might tell us who did this?”