of brandy.
The words were quietly said, so quietly that someone with hearing less acute than Sebastian’s would never have heard them. The others at the table likewise raised their brandy, their voices murmuring, “Hear, hear, to the King,” as they deliberately waved their glasses above a nearby water pitcher before taking a sip.
Sebastian paused with his own ale halfway to his lips.
Over the water.
Leaving the Norfolk Arms, Sebastian had reason to be grateful for what Kat Boleyn liked to call his cat’s eyes. At some point within the last hour, the dark afternoon had slid into night, the heavy clouds left over from the day’s rain blocking out whatever moon and stars might have hung overhead. Here were no neat rows of streetlamps, their oil receptacles lit at sunset by a ladder-toting lamplighter and his boy, as in Mayfair. The shops were shuttered and the narrow lane, though still thronged with people, had few lanterns.
But whereas the setting sun reduced the world for most people to a palate of grays only vaguely seen, Sebastian never lost his ability to distinguish colors. He could see almost as well at night as during the day—better, in some instances, for there were times when he could find the light of an extremely bright day almost too painful to be borne.
And so he was aware of the shadow of a girl who slipped from the mouth of an alley he passed to fall into step behind him. “Pssst,” she whispered. “Sir. About the lady—”
She took a quick, wary step back when Sebastian swung around. She was an exceptionally tall woman, but young. Studying her face, he suspected she was little more than a child, fifteen at the most, maybe fourteen. She had smooth cheeks and a small nose and strangely pale eyes that gave her an almost unearthly quality.
Sebastian’s hand snaked out to close around her upper arm and tighten. “What about her?”
The girl let out a gasp. “Don’t hurt me, please.” Beneath his grip she felt unexpectedly vulnerable. “I heard you askin’ about the lady what come to the inn last week. The lady in the red dress.”
He searched her eyes for some sign of deceit, but could find only fear and a habitual wariness. “You saw her? Do you know whom she came to meet?”
Throwing an anxious glance over one shoulder, she sucked in a quick breath that shuddered her thin chest. “I can’t talk about it here. They might see me.”
Sebastian gave a soft laugh. “That’s your trick, is it? You think to lure me to a darkened doorway where your friends can roll me?”
Her eyes went wide. “No!”
Around them, the crowd in the streets was thinning. A musician lilting a familiar tune on a flute strolled by, followed by three laughing drovers reeking of gin, their arms linked about each other’s shoulders, their voices warbling the ballad’s words.
One of the drovers, a big redheaded man with a broken nose, kicked up his heels in an ambitious jig that drew hoots of encouragement from his mates, then catcalls of derision when he stumbled over the edge of the lane’s kennel. Breathing out heavy fumes of gin and raw onions, he fell against Sebastian, jostling him just enough to allow the girl to slip from his grasp. She darted back up the alley, bare feet flashing, lank blond hair flying loose about her shoulders.
It was a trap of course. He knew that. And still Sebastian followed her.
He found himself in a crooked passageway of packed earth leaking a line of foul water that ran in a trickle between piles of rubbish and broken hogsheads. The buildings here were of red Tudor brick, old and crumbling, the air dank and heavy with the smell of wet mortar and the pervasive stench of blood from a nearby butcher’s shop.
A hundred feet or so down the alley, the girl ducked into a low doorway just as three men rose up from behind a pile of crates and ranged across the narrow space.
They were dressed roughly but not, Sebastian noticed, in rags. “Looks like you made a mistake,” said one of the men, taller and better dressed than the others. He had a long, patrician-nosed face that seemed vaguely familiar, although Sebastian couldn’t fix a name to it. His starched white cravat was flawlessly tied, the tails of his coat black against the dark red of the brick behind him. “Doesn’t it, lad?”
Sebastian swung about. The silhouettes of two more men showed against the dim haze of the smoky torch at the mouth of the alley. He was trapped.
The extent of the preparations for Sebastian’s reception surprised him. He’d been expecting one man, perhaps two. His questions in the neighborhood had obviously touched a raw nerve. And it occurred to him, as he lowered himself into a crouch, that there was more involved here then the death of one young woman.
He kept a dagger hidden in his boot, its handle cool and smooth against his palm as he slipped it surreptitiously into his hand. He felt no fear. Fear came when one had time to reflect or was helpless to fight back. What he felt now was a heart-pounding flow of energy, a heightening of all senses and skills.
With a speed and competence honed by six years of operating in the mountains of Portugal and Italy, and in the
