Why Mermaids Sing

dried tears. But Sebastian could see the shudder of his stained white nightshirt where it stretched across his chest.

“Anthony?” Sebastian hunkered down to touch the boy’s shoulder. “I’m here to take you home. Everything’s going to be all right.”

The boy’s eyes fluttered open, then closed again, his breath coming slow and shallow. Newman had obviously dosed the boy liberally with laudanum.

“Don’t be afraid of the knife. I’m going to use it to cut you loose.” His hand sweaty on the handle of the blade, Sebastian sliced through the ropes at the boy’s hands and feet, then loosed the gag at his mouth.

“You need to wake up for me, Anthony.” He grasped the boy’s shoulders to give him a little shake. “Can you stand?”

Anthony’s eyelids opened again, his eyes glassy, his head rolling on his neck.

“Come on then.” Slipping his hands beneath the boy’s armpits, Sebastian hauled him upright, staggering slightly as he took the boy’s weight. For one perilous moment, the barn’s dusty light dimmed, and Sebastian’s head swam.

“I don’t think I can carry you, lad.” Sebastian wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist. “You’ve got to at least hold on and try to walk. Can you do that?”

Anthony’s lips parted, his thin chest shuddering as he sucked in a deep breath and nodded.

“Good lad.” Sebastian lurched toward the passage. He wasn’t sure if he was holding the boy up, or if it was the other way around. The rain pounded on the roof, pattered against the high windows. He was concentrating so hard on putting one foot in front of the other that it wasn’t until they’d reached the arched entrance to the carriage room that Sebastian heard the slap of boots in the mud outside and the rasp of the carriage doors opening.

Chapter 64

Sebastian shoved the boy behind him. “The door at the other end of the passage,” he whispered. “Get yourself out of here, then run like hell for the wood.” As long as Sebastian could keep Newman at the entrance to the carriage room, the shadowy recesses of the passage would be out of his line of vision.

Aaron Newman loomed in the open carriage doors, a lean figure silhouetted against the rain-filled yard. “Stay right there and put your hands where I can see them,” said the doctor, the fowling piece gripped in both hands. “Do it, my lord. Or I swear to God, I’ll shoot you.”

Sebastian braced his hands against the stone doorframe beside him and said, “It’s over, Dr. Newman.”

The doctor’s hands tightened on the shotgun’s ornate stock. “I beg to differ with you, my lord, but I don’t see it that way.”

Sebastian was aware of the boy’s frightened breathing behind him, the furtive patter of bare feet on the cobbled floor as Anthony crept toward the far end of the passage. Sebastian managed to keep his voice calm, although he could feel his pulse racing in his neck. “I didn’t come alone. Sir Henry Lovejoy and some half a dozen of his constables are on their way here.”

Newman raised one eyebrow. “You came ahead, did you? How foolhardy of you.”

By now Anthony had reached the far end of the passage. “I know about your son,” said Sebastian, scuffing one bootheel across the cobbles to cover the scrape made by the door’s bolt being drawn back. “I know what they did to him on the Harmony. I understand your anger and your desire for justice. But why not kill the men responsible for what happened to him? Why murder their innocent children?”

Newman shook his head, a muscle jumping along his tightened jaw. “Death ends all suffering. I wanted them to pay for what they did to Gideon and for what they did to me. I wanted them to feel what I have felt, to suffer what I have suffered. They killed my son. I killed theirs.”

“Edward Bellamy didn’t kill your son.”

“He didn’t protect him, either. My son was entrusted to his care. Bellamy was captain of that ship. If anyone had the power to stop what happened, it was him.”

Sebastian felt the brush of cool air from the door easing open at his back, heard the slow creak of a hinge as Anthony Atkinson moved oh so carefully.

“Yet you killed the Reverend Thornton’s son first. Why?”

“Thornton was a man of God. A man of God. He urged them to kill my son. Urged them! Mary Thornton told me about it when she was dying. About how the good Reverend reassured the others that God would forgive them. Well, he was wrong, wasn’t he?”

“Did you kill her? Mary Thornton, I mean.”

Newman shook his head. “God killed her.”

Sebastian was watching the man’s wild gray eyes. And so he knew the instant the doctor heard the bang of the Dutch door flying fully open, the distant slap of running feet hitting the muddy yard.

His lips peeled away from his teeth in a painful grimace. “You bastard.” Sebastian jerked back just as Newman tightened his finger on the shotgun’s trigger and fired.

The first barrel discharged in a deafening blast of fiery powder and shot that sent bits of stone coping and wooden splinters from the stairs flying. The air filled with thick smoke and the stench of cordite.

Sebastian took one step toward the open door at the end of the cobbled aisle, then knew it for a mistake. Newman still had another barrel. Silhouetted against the open doorway, Sebastian would be impossible to miss.

He dove instead into the first stall, his injured shoulder exploding in fire as he careened into the plank wall and slipped to his knees. The carriage horse whinnied in alarm, its head tossing, its hooves clattering on the straw-covered cobbles.

Sebastian rolled quickly to his feet, his head spinning as he drew back into the shadows. He could feel the drops of mingled sweat and rainwater dripping from his hair to roll down his cheeks, hear the doctor’s boots in the cobbled passage. Slipping his knife from his boot, Sebastian reached out and unhooked the bay’s tether. He held the length of leather clutched in his fist, the edges of the stiff hide digging into his palm as he waited for Newman to come into view.

He watched the doctor pass the stall, his gaze fixed on the open doorway at the end of the passage. The bay snorted and tossed its head, just as Sebastian let the tether drop.

The sound of the leather slapping against the stall’s heelpost brought Newman’s head around, his eyes wide. Sebastian pricked the bay’s flanks and sent it charging out of the stall. Newman took a quick step back, his finger tightening on the trigger in a reflex action. The fowling piece exploded in a deafening concussion that filled the stables with flames and smoke. Shot ripped through the nearest heelpost, torn shards of wood and splinters flying through the air as Sebastian dove into him.

The force of the impact sent Newman crashing back against the harness room wall. Their feet tangled, Newman going down to smack his back hard against the cobbled floor. Sebastian slammed on top of him, the knife blade held tight against the doctor’s throat.

In the sudden stillness, his ears still ringing from the shot, Sebastian could hear the sawing of his own breath and the roar of the rain through the open doors. And something else. The distant thunder of approaching horses ridden fast.

Newman’s lips parted, his chest shuddering as he sought to draw air into his aching lungs. “Kill me,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

Sebastian shook his head. He thought about Francesca Bellamy, about Lady Carmichael, about Dominic Stanton’s mother, now half mad with her grief. And he felt a rush of fury that submerged all shreds of pity or understanding. “No. You said it yourself. Death ends all suffering. And you deserve to suffer. For what you did to those innocent young men and for what their deaths have done to those who loved them.”

They heard a shout from the yard and a boy’s thin voice saying, “In the stables. They’re in the stables.”

Newman’s eyes squeezed shut, his breathing still ragged. “I did it for Gideon. I was never able to do anything for him in life. The least I could do was avenge his death.”

“No.” Sebastian closed his fist on the doctor’s coat and hauled him to his feet. “You did it for yourself.”