dark and quiet. In the distance, he could hear the faint, mournful tolling of a death knell.
Bringing up one hand, he explored the open gash that parted the hair just above his ear. She batted his hand away. “Don’t touch.” She was busy for a moment mixing crushed herbs from the apothecary into a salve. Then she said, “You knew it was a trap. Why walk into it?”
“I thought I might learn something. I wasn’t expecting five men. Or a pistol.”
“So what did you learn? That your questions are making someone uncomfortable? You knew that. Someone’s been following you for days.”
“I don’t think my shadow was amongst the men who attacked me.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”
“No. But the men today didn’t know who I was. If they had, my friend with the cudgel wouldn’t have been so anxious to find out who sent me.”
She finished smearing the open wound with the salve and went to pack a clean cloth with a mixture of grated raw potatoes and cold milk. “Are you going to tell Sir Henry about this?”
Sebastian looked up from peeling his shirt off over his head. “Lovejoy? What the devil could he do?”
She came to slap the cold compress on his bruised shoulder. “He could send someone to investigate the Norfolk Arms.”
“That’s just what I need,” he said, reaching up to hold the compress in place. “Some thickheaded constable tromping about the place, asking blunt questions and putting up everyone’s back. It’s the best way I can think of to make sure we never learn anything.”
Her gaze met his, her beautiful blue eyes wide and troubled. “You can’t go there again yourself.”
He touched her face, his fingertips skimming gently across her cheek. “Careful, Miss Boleyn. You’re in danger of betraying an almost wifely concern for my health.”
He expected her to make some quick rejoinder and then flit away. Instead, she leaned against him, her arms coming around his neck to hold him close. “If these people are involved in a conspiracy against the Regent and they think you’re on to them, they won’t hesitate to kill you. You know that.”
He pressed his face against the softness of her breasts. “We know the men at one table in the common room of the Norfolk Arms have a romantic attachment to a dead exiled king. That doesn’t make the entire district guilty of plotting to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty.”
She pushed away from him and went to assemble the various salves and potions she’d been using. The uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability was gone. She was once more in control, her voice teasing as she said, “I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”
Stretching to his feet, he swung his arm in slow circles, working out the stiffness in the muscle. “I don’t. But I can’t see how it fits with what I know of Guinevere Anglessey’s life. Now, if I could find some way to tie my friends from Giltspur Street to Bevan Ellsworth, it might begin to make sense. According to Guinevere’s abigail, he came storming into his uncle’s town house last Monday and essentially threatened to kill her. He also has one hell of a motive—the birth of Guinevere’s son would have disinherited him. With his creditors already pressing him for repayment, Ellsworth could easily have decided he couldn’t take a chance on the child being born a girl.”
“And you never liked him anyway.”
Sebastian looked over at her and smiled. “And I never liked him anyway.” Stripping off his bloodied breeches, he went to tip another kettle of hot water into the hip bath they’d drawn beside the kitchen hearth. “What do you know of Fabian Fitzfrederick?”
“He and Ellsworth are of much the same set, although Fitzfrederick also runs with the Dandies.” She frowned. “Why? You think Fitzfrederick might be involved?”
“Hell. I don’t know. He does provide a link between Ellsworth and the royal family.”
“A tenuous one.”
“A tenuous one.” Sebastian stepped over the high enameled sides and settled himself in the tub, his knees drawn up close to his chest. “The problem is, while the Inns of Court are suspiciously close to Giltspur Street, Ellsworth himself simply wouldn’t have had time to drag Guinevere’s body down to Brighton and still make it back to his faro game in Pickering Place by ten o’clock. Apart from which, the man’s interests begin and end with the turf and gaming table—and the set of his coat, of course. Why would he go through all the risks involved in attempting to implicate the Regent?”
“To deflect suspicion from himself?” Kat suggested.
“Surely there are easier ways to have done so?”
She was silent in that way she had, carefully thinking things through. “The only one I can see who might have a reason to implicate the Regent is Anglessey himself. If he found out the Prince was pursuing her when she hadn’t told him, he might have believed the advances were welcome.”
Sebastian leaned his head against the back of the tub and let the moist heat of the water soothe his sore muscles and aching shoulder. After a few moments, he said, “If Anglessey were to implicate anyone in his wife’s murder, I think it would be his nephew, not the Regent. Besides, Anglessey’s a sick old man. He’s simply too frail to have managed the thing. Apart from which, he was in Brighton, remember?”
She came to kneel on the stone flagging beside him, a bar of soap in one hand. “He could have hired someone.”
“Hell, they all could have hired someone.”
“Sit forward.” Kat worked the soap across his shoulders and down his back. “What about Varden? They could have had a lovers’ quarrel. A quarrel that turned violent.”
“We don’t know that they were lovers.”
“They were lovers,” said Kat.
