Radcliff shook his head like a dog coming in out of a storm. “What the devil?”
Crouching low, Sebastian grabbed another fistful of Radcliff’s nightshirt with one hand and pressed the sharp edge of the broken bottle up under the man’s chin. “Give me one good excuse to slit your throat,” he said, enunciating each word with awful clarity, “and believe me, I will. I’ve just had a surgeon to tend your wife’s injuries. It’s no thanks to you she’s not dead.”
“Julia? Wha’d the bitch say? If she told you—”
Radcliff let out a yelp as Sebastian increased the pressure on the sharp edge held against his throat.
“Don’t. Don’t ever let me hear you use a word like that to describe your wife again. Do I make myself understood? I have no mercy for a man like you. There’s a special place in hell for a man who uses his fists on his own wife, and I’ll be more than happy to send you there.”
Lord Peter stared up at him with bulging eyes. He might not be entirely sober, but he was now wide-awake. “You’re mad.”
“I may well be. I’m beginning to suspect that we all are, each in our own way.”
“You can’t come in here, threatening me, acting like I’m some—”
Sebastian shifted his weight in a way that made Lord Peter break off and draw a quick, shallow breath.
Sebastian said, “In case you haven’t noticed, I am already here. Where you made your mistake was in lying to me. You told me you spent last Thursday night at home with your wife. You didn’t. You got into a row with her. You were angry about her renewed acquaintance with an old childhood friend—”
“He wasn’t simply some ‘old friend’! He was her lover.”
“Nine years ago. Not now.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Yes. And I believe her.” Sebastian let his gaze drift over the other man’s face, slick with sweat and slack now with the aftereffects of too much alcohol and too little sleep. “Is that why you followed Pelletan to St. Katharine’s and stuck a knife in his back?”
“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t. I won’t deny I was angry; what man wouldn’t be? I even went to the inn where the bastard was staying. I was going to tell him that Julia is my wife and he’d better stay the hell away from her. But I didn’t even do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because when I got there, he was standing on the footpath outside the inn, talking to Lady Giselle.”
Sebastian stared at him. “Are you telling me you saw Damion Pelletan talking with Lady Giselle Edmondson?”
Radcliff looked puzzled by Sebastian’s vehemence. “That’s right. Why?”
“How do you know the woman you saw was Lady Giselle?”
“Because I recognized her. How do you think? She was wearing a hat with a veil, but she’d pushed back the veil and the light from the oil lamp beside the door was falling full on her face.”
“Did you hear anything of what was said?”
“No; of course not. What the bloody hell do you think I am? I don’t go around eavesdropping on other people’s private conversations.”
“Was there a man with her?”
“There was, but I couldn’t tell you who. He stayed in the background.”
“So then what happened?”
“I don’t know. I left.”
“You left? Why?”
“At first I’d planned to wait in the shadows until she went away, and then confront him. But the longer I stood there, the more I realized that would be a mistake.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Because I’m not a killer, whatever you may think. And I realized that if I approached him then, in the rage I was in, I might very well murder him. So I left. I won’t say I’m sorry the bastard is dead because I’m not. But he didn’t die at my hand.”
“Where did you go after you left York Street?”
“I don’t know. I wandered the streets for a while—I couldn’t say for how long. I ended up in a low tavern someplace in Westminster. At one point I got into a brawl with a drunk who drew my cork. Then I spent what was left of the night in a back room with a whore I wouldn’t even recognize if I saw her again.”
Sebastian studied Lord Peter’s haggard face. He’d said he had no mercy for men like Radcliff, but that wasn’t exactly true. If not mercy, then he at least acknowledged a measure of pity even though he knew it was probably misplaced. In his own way, Lord Peter was a victim. A victim of a society that valued show above substance, birth above real worth. A victim of a hereditary system that brought up younger sons in an indulgent, pampered atmosphere even as it tormented them with the knowledge that the vast estates and palatial homes they’d enjoyed as children would never be theirs. And he was a victim of his own weakness, the recognition of which led him to strike out in anger and frustration at his wife when what he really wanted more than anything else was to be admired and indulged and loved.
Sebastian said, “Listen to me carefully because I’m going to say this only once. Your wife is going to leave you, and you are going to let her.”