“Stanley Preston? Ain’t ’e the cove what got ’is ’ead cut off out at Bloody Bridge?”
Hero nodded. “He visited Bucket Lane just hours before he was killed. I’m trying to find out why he went there and whom he saw.”
McDougal squinted up at the thick gray clouds scuttling in overhead to rob the day of its promise of warmth and sunshine. A cold wind had kicked up, ruffling the feathers of the gulls screaming overhead and intensifying the odor of raw fish that rose from both the man and his cart. “Ye thinkin’ maybe some coster done fer ’im?”
“No; not at all. But two other people who knew Preston and saw him that day are now dead too. Which means that whoever Preston visited in Bucket Lane could very well be in danger. Only he—or she—might not know it.”
McDougal brought his gaze back to her face. “Well, I can look into it, m’lady. But I can’t guarantee they’ll be willin’ t’ talk t’ ye.”
“I know. Just . . . whoever it is, please try to help them understand that their lives might be threatened. If they know anything—anything at all—it’s important for them to come forward.”
He rasped one palm across the several days’ worth of beard shading his jaw. “I’ll try, my lady. I’ll try.”
The rain was already beginning to fall by the time Hero made it back to Brook Street, a fine but hard-driven rain that swirled in wind-whipped eddies between the tall town houses and stung the tender bare skin of her face.
She had just stepped from her carriage and was about to mount the front steps when she saw Devlin round the corner from Bond Street, the capes of his black greatcoat flapping in the wind, his hat tipped low against the downpour.
“Devlin,” she called, and he looked up, his face lean and unsmiling. Then his strange yellow eyes widened, his body jerking as the crack of a rifle shot reverberated between the tall row houses.
A shiny wet stain bloomed dark against the darkness of his coat.
“No!” Hero screamed.
The bullet’s impact spun him around. He grasped the iron railing of a nearby house’s area steps. Tried to stay upright. Crumpled slowly to his knees.
“Oh, my God.” Hero ran, hands fisted in her skirts. Her world narrowed down to a gray wet canyon where the only sound was a desperate gasping she dimly recognized as her own, and the only color the red splash of Devlin’s blood.
“Sebastian.”
She dropped to her knees beside him, hands reaching for him. He lay curled on his side away from her, the rain washing over his pale face. She touched his shoulder and he turned toward her. She saw the confusion in those familiar yellow eyes, the pain that convulsed the features that were so like Devlin’s. But it wasn’t Devlin.
It was Jamie Knox.
Chapter 45
S ebastian reached home just as Pippa, the barmaid from the Black Devil, was coming down the front steps. She had a paisley shawl drawn up over her head and a child of perhaps a year on her hip. At the sight of Sebastian she paused, her arms tightening around the child, so that he squirmed in protest.
“It’s your fault!” she screamed, tears mingling with the rain on her face. “I told him no good would come of it, but would he listen to me? No. He never listened t’ me.”
Sebastian stared at the child in her arms. It was a boy, with fine-boned features and a small, turned-up nose and the same yellow eyes that stared back at Sebastian from his own mirror.
From his own infant son.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
Her laugh was raw, torn; not really a laugh at all. “You sayin’ you don’t know? He’s layin’ up there in one of your own fancy beds, dyin’ because of you, and you don’t know?”
He grabbed her arm more roughly than he’d intended. “Knox?”
She jerked away from him. “You tell him— You tell him, I won’t stay and watch him die.” And she pushed past him, her head bowed against the rain, her shoulders convulsing with her sobs as the boy gazed back at Sebastian with a solemn, intense stare.
Gibson was coming out of the guest bedroom at the end of the hall when Sebastian reached the second floor.
“How is he?”
The surgeon rubbed his eyes with a spread thumb and forefinger. “I’ve done what I can. The bullet ripped through his lungs and lodged beside his heart. He’s bleeding inside, and there’s no way to stop it. At this point, it’s just a matter of time.”
“Surely there’s some hope—a chance—”
Gibson shook his head. “Lady Devlin thinks whoever shot him mistook Knox for you.”
Sebastian felt an aching hollowness open up inside him, carved out by denial and rage and a hideous, familiar sense of guilt. “Where was he?”
“Just steps from your front door.” Gibson started to say something else, then stopped.
“What?” asked Sebastian.
“It’s just . . . the resemblance is uncanny.”
“Yes,” said Sebastian, and turned toward the bedroom.