Why Mermaids Sing

“What?”

Forbes kept his gaze on the stone paving beneath his feet, a tide of color staining his cheeks. “It’s not the sort of thing a man speaks of ordinarily. But…My second wife—Gideon’s mother—she was already some three months gone with child when I married her.”

Sebastian leaned forward. “The father—who was he?”

“I don’t know. She never told me and I never asked. Her parents never knew she was with child. I gather they had objected to the match because of the man’s religion.”

“Where was your wife raised? In Hertfordshire?”

“No. She was from a village called Hollingbourne, in Kent.”

Sebastian thrust up from his seat. “Is that near Avery?”

Forbes’s head came up, his mouth slack with surprise. “How did you know?”

Chapter 59

Sebastian could hear thunder rumbling in the distance by the time he reached Brook Street. He set his groom, Giles, scrambling to saddle the Arab, then sent for Tom.

Sebastian was in his library, loading a small pistol, when Tom scooted into the room. “I want you to find Sir Henry,” said Sebastian, slipping the flintlock into his pocket as he briefly ran through the conversation with Forbes. “Tell him what I’ve discovered and where I’ve gone.” He squinted up at the leaden sky and paused to throw a cloak over his shoulders. It was going to be a wet ride.

“I could come with you,” Tom said. He had to trot to keep up as Sebastian crossed the gardens toward the stables, jerking on his leather riding gloves as he went. “You could send Giles with the message and—”

“No. This man is a killer. I want you well away from him. You deliver the message to Sir Henry, and then you await me here. That’s an order.” Sebastian gathered the black’s reins, but paused to give the boy a hard look. “Do you understand me?”

Tom’s shoulders slumped. “Aye, gov’nor.”

Sebastian settled into his saddle and felt the mare tremble beneath him, as if she could sense his urgency and was eager to be off. But he held her in check long enough to lean down and say to Tom, “Disobey me in this, and I swear to God, I’ll take it out of your hide.” Then he tightened his knees to send the Arab thundering down the mews.

The rain began in earnest just after Sebastian clattered across the bridge into Blackfriars Road. This was a mean part of London, the streets narrow and unpaved and filled with clutches of ragged, hollow-eyed children and crippled beggars who forced Sebastian to hold the Arab in until he was well past Greenwich Road. By the time he reached Blackheath, the rain had become a steady, wind-driven torrent that stung his cheeks and ran down the back of his neck and rapidly turned the pike into a dangerous quagmire.

How many hours had passed since Anthony Atkinson’s abduction? he wondered, pushing on. Four? Five? A part of him acknowledged that the boy might already be dead. But he clung to the hope that Anthony might yet live. It couldn’t be easy for a man dedicated to saving lives to steel himself to the brutal murder of a child.

It struck Sebastian as ironic, how a single, easily overlooked piece of information could provide a solution if one simply shifted his perspective and considered it from a different angle. He’d wondered how the killer had learned the details of the Harmony’s ordeal, yet he’d given little thought to Reverend Thornton’s wife, who must have faced her coming death last Christmas weighed down by the onerous guilt upon her soul. From where could she have sought absolution for the sins of murder and cannibalism? Not from the rector her husband, whose guilt was as great as her own. And so she must have chosen to unburden herself to her dear family friend and physician, Dr. Aaron Newman, never imagining that the man to whom she’d confided her terrible secret was actually the dead boy’s natural father.

Yet even armed with the truth of what had happened to Gideon Forbes and David Jarvis, Newman must have known himself to be at point non plus. It had been impossible for him to move against the Harmony’s survivors in a court of law; even if the ship’s passengers hadn’t included some of the most powerful men in the Kingdom, Newman had no proof of what had occurred on that ship beyond a dying woman’s testimony given without other witnesses. And so he had decided to wreak his own terrible form of revenge, killing not his son’s murderers, but their sons.

Thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning. And if an ox have gored a son or have gored a daughter, according to this judgment shall it be done onto him… How much suffering and death had been wrought upon the world, Sebastian wondered, by a literal interpretation of that ancient biblical passage? Wrapping the folds of his cloak around him, he kneed the mare on ever faster through the pounding rain.

He noticed the two horsemen at the first toll. They rode up, hats pulled low, collars turned against the wind and rain just as Sebastian was passing through the gate. One of them, a tall man with a broken nose, reached down to hand their toll to the gatekeeper. He glanced up, his gaze catching Sebastian’s eye just as Sebastian set his spurs to the mare’s flanks.

After that, he was aware of them behind him, two rough-coated men riding as hard as he. Any men out on such a day would be riding hard. But when Sebastian deliberately slowed his pace at a small hamlet, the men dropped back.

Bloody hell. He suppressed the urge to whirl and confront them. He didn’t have time for this.

He drove the mare on faster. He could feel her dainty hooves slipping in the soupy churned mud of the road. Rain slid in cold rivulets down his cheeks, ran into his eyes. He was shaking his head, trying to clear them, when the mare stumbled.

She pitched forward with a frightened squeal. He just managed to kick his feet free of the stirrups before she went down and rolled. His back slammed against the ground hard enough to drive the wind from his body, leaving him gasping in agony.

He was aware of the sounds of the mare scrambling to her feet, but he couldn’t move. Rain beat against his face, ran into his open mouth as he fought to draw the breath back into his aching chest. Floundering in the mud, he managed to prop himself up on one elbow. He opened his eyes just in time to see the muddy sole of a man’s boot driving toward his face. Then all was black.

Chapter 60

He awoke to pain and the mists of confusion. The confusion lifted slowly. He remembered the mare stumbling, the sound of boots in the mud, an explosion of pain in his face. He could taste blood in his mouth, feel more blood mingling with mud and rain. Then he realized the pain in his jaw came not only from that kick, but also from the gag that pried his lips apart, making it difficult to swallow.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes. He lay on his back, his hands twisted awkwardly beneath him and tied at the wrist. His ankles were tied, too, and suspended oddly in the air. Squinting against the rain, he saw that someone had taken one end of the rope that bound his ankles and looped it over an oak branch that stretched above him. He remembered the way Barclay Carmichael had been found butchered and hanging upside down from a mulberry tree in St. James’s Park, and knew a rush of raw fear.

His hat and cloak were both gone, along with the reassuring weight of the pistol he’d slipped into his coat pocket. He’d obviously been dragged away from the road, for he was now in a clearing of what looked like a thick stand of oaks. The smell of wet grass, dirt, and leaves was strong. He could hear the rain still pounding on the leaves overhead, but the canopy sheltered him from the worst of the downpour.

Shifting his head slowly so as not to attract attention, he scanned the small clearing. He could see only one man; a small, thin man with overlong blond hair who leaned against the trunk of a tree some twenty-five feet away. Beyond him, Sebastian could see his own black Arab and one other horse, a big bay.

There had been two men following him, Sebastian remembered. The second man must have ridden away,