either for reinforcements or to notify whoever had hired them. The man leaning against the tree had the air of someone waiting.
Sebastian studied his guard more closely. He stood with one knee bent, the sole of his boot propped against the trunk behind him, his hat pulled low on his forehead against the rain. He looked young, very young, his clothes rough. Rougher than those of the killer who had attacked Sebastian on the hoy, more like those of the men who had broken into Kat’s house Friday night.
A sudden wave of nausea roiled Sebastian’s stomach, so that he had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment. But he knew he needed to make his move now, before anyone else returned. His breath coming shallow and quick, Sebastian opened his eyes and squinted up at his feet.
They might have found his pistol, but it had evidently never occurred to the men who had bound and gagged and tethered him by his ankles to a tree that a nobleman might be carrying a knife in his boot; he could still feel the subtle pressure of that small, deadly blade against his calf. The hard part would be getting the knife out without attracting his guard’s attention.
Moving slowly, Sebastian straightened his legs as much as possible and locked his knees while shifting his weight subtly to the right. The sheath was well oiled, and he was hoping gravity alone might be enough to loosen the knife.
It wasn’t.
He threw a quick glance at the man leaning against the tree. He hadn’t moved. Gritting his teeth, Sebastian gave a series of short, sharp kicks upward with his right heel. The knife slipped out of its sheath to land with a soft thump in the wet leaf litter beside his hip.
By lifting his hips in the air, Sebastian was able to shift his bound arms over far enough to close his fingers around the handle of the knife. He reversed the blade, angling it carefully toward the rope that bound his wrists. The point nicked the pad of his palm and he swore silently to himself. Then he felt the blade bite into the rope.
It wasn’t easy, holding his hips in the air, balancing his weight on his shoulders while sawing blindly. Rain pattered on his face, ran into his eyes. Twice the knife slipped, slicing into his wrists. He could feel the blood slippery on his hands, on the knife.
He became aware of a vibration in the wet earth beneath him: horses’ hooves coming fast from somewhere off to the left where the road must lie. He willed them to keep going. They slowed.
The man beside the tree hunched his shoulders against the rain, his head still bowed as if he were oblivious to the sounds of approach. Sebastian felt the last of the rope give way beneath his blade just as a man’s shout cut through the dripping woods. The hireling beside the tree lifted his head and glanced back at Sebastian. Sebastian lay perfectly still, his hands twisted out of sight beneath him, the knife clutched in one blood-slicked fist.
Lord Stanton rode into the clearing, mounted on a fine gray and flanked by two coarsely dressed men. “Is he alive?” Stanton demanded.
The blond-headed hireling pushed away from the tree and went to hold the Baron’s horse. “Last I looked.”
Stanton grunted and swung down from the saddle. Sebastian looked beyond him to the other two men. One —the tall, thin-framed man with a broken nose—he recognized from the tollgate. The man helping the blond youth with the horses was the survivor from Friday night’s assault on Harwich Street.
His boots crunching a litter of twigs and wet leaves, Stanton halted in the center of the clearing, his gaze on Sebastian’s face. “So. You’re still alive.”
Sebastian blinked, his mouth held rigid by the gag.
The Baron swiped one forearm across his wet face. “You have no one but yourself to blame for this situation. Indeed, I went out of my way to discourage your involvement. I feared all along it would come to this.”
Sebastian stared up into the Baron’s pale, fleshy face and marveled at the man’s capacity for self-deception. If Sebastian had been less agile or his hearing less acute, it would have come to this in the dead of the night on Harwich Street, or before, on the hoy on the Thames.
“Have you succeeded, then?” Stanton asked. “Do you know who killed my son?”
His eyes wide, his grip on the knife handle behind his back tightening, Sebastian nodded.
Stanton motioned to the tall, thin-framed man with the broken nose. “Take the gag out of his mouth so he can talk.”
Sebastian waited, tense and ready, while the man came to crouch down beside him.
“Lift yer ’ead so’s I can get at the knot,” he ordered.
Sebastian obligingly raised his head. He waited until the man was fully occupied picking at the knot; then Sebastian moved.
Tilting his hips up so that his shoulders took all his weight, Sebastian grabbed a fistful of the man’s coat with one hand, holding him steady while he drove the knife deep into the man’s chest.
The man convulsed, pale eyes widening with shock. But Sebastian was already jerking the dagger out of the man’s chest. Holding the hireling’s body like a shield, Sebastian jackknifed up and hacked desperately at the rope binding his ankles.
The young yellow-haired man reached Sebastian just as the knife freed his ankles. “Oye! What the—”
Sebastian twisted so that his falling feet came down against the side of the man’s head with a solid
Sebastian hit the sodden ground in a roll and came up onto his feet at a run. With Stanton and the third hireling between Sebastian and the horses, he had no choice but to plunge downhill, away from them. He felt a stinging slice across his upper arm the instant before he heard the boom of a pistol reverberate through the forest.
“You, Horn,” he heard Stanton shout, “stay with the horses in case he tries to circle back. Burke, come with me.”
Wet branches slapped Sebastian in the face. His coat caught on a hawthorn and he breathed another quick oath, ripping it free. Given enough time, he had no doubt he could outrun Stanton and his men, but time was the one thing Sebastian didn’t have.
He scanned the trees ahead, swerving toward an ancient oak with stout branches arching low to the ground. Slipping his knife back into its sheath, he was reaching for the lowest branch when his gaze fell on the tumble of stones lying half hidden in the leaf litter at the tree’s roots. He hesitated, then swooped to select a particularly lethal-looking chunk with jagged edges. He hefted it for a moment, testing its weight. Then he scrambled into the tree.
Sebastian found his left arm unexpectedly weak, so he made more noise than he would have liked climbing into the ancient oak. Crouching on the lowest branch, he rested his back against the rough trunk, his breath coming hard and fast.
From some distance to his right came Stanton’s voice. “Devlin? You might as well give yourself up and stop this foolishness. You don’t have a chance. There are still three of us.”
Sebastian could see them now, Stanton and his man Burke. They were keeping close together, and they were going the wrong way, cutting along the side of the hill. For a moment Sebastian considered simply staying where he was. Except he knew that if they gave up and left, they would take his horse with them.
Casting a critical eye over the oak’s nearest boughs, he found a small, half-dead branch and leaned his weight against it until it broke off in his hand with a
Stanton drew up, his gaze darting first one way, then the other. “It’s him.” He held the flintlock close, one finger curled around the trigger. Sebastian doubted Stanton had taken the time to reload, but it was a double-
