purpose now.
He tucked his snuffbox away and said calmly, “The understanding we reached on these matters still stands. I assume you are here merely to reassure me that as long as Miss Boleyn’s secrets are safe, others are safe?”
“That’s a fair representation of the situation, yes.”
“Good. Then we understand each other.”
Yates rose to his feet. Jarvis waited until he was at the door to add, “It does seem a waste.”
Yates turned. “How’s that, my lord?”
“Such a beautiful woman, married to a man uninterested in women.”
If he’d been hoping for a rise, Jarvis was disappointed. Yates merely smiled and said, “Good day, my lord.”
Some twenty minutes later, Jarvis was still sitting at his desk when his daughter, Hero, appeared at the door.
“The most vexatious thing, Papa. Grandmama has thrown her chamber pot at the upstairs parlor maid, and now both the maid and Cook have quit.”
“The cook?” Jarvis looked around, his attention caught. “Why the cook?”
“Cook is Emily’s aunt.”
“Emily? Who the deuce is Emily?”
“The upstairs parlor maid.”
“Good God,” roared Jarvis. “And what would you have me do about it? The petty affairs of this household are not in my province.”
“I don’t expect you to do anything about it,” said Hero. “I have simply come to warn you that dinner will be delayed.”
“Dinner? But…who is cooking it?”
“I am,” said his daughter with unruffled equanimity, and closed the door behind her.
Jarvis stared at the closed panel for a moment, then rose to pour himself a brandy. It had been a trying week.
The day might have been overcast, but the light streaming in through Paul Gibson’s kitchen windows was still bright enough to hurt Sebastian’s eyes. He squeezed them shut and ran a hand across his beard-roughened chin. “Remind me why I stayed here, rather than going home? I need a shave. And a bath. And clean clothes.”
Paul Gibson answered him from across the room. “You needed to talk.”
Sebastian opened one eye. “I did? How much did I say?”
“Enough.” Gibson came to stand on the far side of the battered kitchen table. “I’m sorry, Sebastian.”
Sebastian looked away.
“Here.” Gibson plunked a tankard of ale on the boards before him. “This will help your head. You’d best drink it before you hear this morning’s news.”
Sebastian brought his gaze back to his friend’s face. “Why? What’s happened?”
“It’s Felix Atkinson’s twelve-year-old son, Anthony. He’s missing.”
Sebastian found Felix Atkinson in the drawing room of his prosperous West End home. The East India Company man stood with his back to the room, his gaze fixed on the scene outside the window overlooking Portland Place. In a damask-covered chair off to one side, a pale-haired woman in her early thirties wept quietly into a handkerchief. As far as Sebastian could see, her husband was making no attempt to comfort her.
“I’d like a word with you,” Sebastian told Atkinson. “Alone.”
Atkinson swung to face him, all bluster and trembling affront. “Really, my lord. Now is hardly the time —”
Sebastian cut him off. “I don’t think you want Mrs. Atkinson to hear what I have to say.”
A rush of color darkened the other man’s cheeks. He cast a quick glance at his wife, then looked away. “We can speak in the morning room.”
They had barely crossed into the morning room before Sebastian’s hands closed over Atkinson’s shoulders and spun him around to slam his spine up against the nearest wall.
“You bloody, self-obsessed, lying son of a bitch,” said Sebastian, spitting out each word through gritted teeth.
Atkinson gasped and made as if to pull away. “How dare you? How dare you lay hands upon me in my own h—”
Sebastian pressed his forearm against the man’s throat, pinning him to the wall. “I know what happened on that ship. I know about Gideon Forbes, and I know what really happened to David Jarvis.”
Atkinson went utterly still. “You can’t.”
“I read the log.”
“The log? But the log was lost. Bellamy said the log was lost.”
“He lied.” Sebastian shoved his forearm up under the man’s chin harder. “You all lied. What did you do? Get together after Thornton’s and Carmichael’s sons were killed and swear one another to secrecy?”
“What choice did we have?”
“You could have told the truth.”
Atkinson’s tongue darted out to moisten his lips. “How could we? No one would have understood about the boy. You have no idea what it was like on that ship. The fear. The endless days and nights of hunger. That kind of hunger, it’s like a yawning pit of fire in your belly, consuming you. You’ll do anything when you’re hungry like that.”
“You might. Yet people starve to death on the streets of London all the time. They don’t kill and eat each other.”
Atkinson sucked in a breath that shook his entire frame. “The boy was dying. All we did was hasten the hour of his death. David Jarvis should never have tried to stop us.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? What about the
“We didn’t know the frigate was out there! We thought we would die without seeing another ship. How could we have known?”
“That’s why men shouldn’t take it upon themselves to play God.” Sebastian shifted his grip. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to think very hard before answering. After the crew mutinied and abandoned ship, were any of the men left aboard?”
“Crewmen, you mean? No. Only Bellamy, the three ship’s officers, and the boy. Why? Who do you think is doing this? You have some idea, don’t you? Who is it?” His voice rose. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Sebastian simply shook his head. “It hasn’t struck you as peculiar that this killer knows exactly which lots you each drew after the boy’s murder?”
The tic began to play at the edge of Atkinson’s mouth. “Peculiar? It’s terrifying! It’s as if he were there on the ship with us. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
Sebastian gave the man a nasty smile. “You tell me.”
“I told you before. I don’t know who’s doing this.
“It’s too late to save yourself. When Jarvis hears you murdered his son, you’re going to wish you did die on that ship.”
“It wasn’t me! I didn’t have a cutlass! It was one of the others.”
“You think that will make a difference to Jarvis?”
Atkinson’s entire face convulsed. “No. I know it won’t. We all know it won’t. Why else do you think we’ve kept silent?”
“Why? Because you value your own lives more than you value the lives of your sons.” Sebastian let the man go and stepped back. “When was your boy taken?”
Atkinson adjusted his cravat and gave the lapels of his coat a twitch. “This morning, early. He was gone from
