the Orchard Street Academy. That she had once called herself Rose Fletcher. And that the circumstances surrounding her precipitous departure from the house were of such a nature that the very mention of her name was enough to throw the house’s remaining inhabitants into a state of consternation.
Idly swinging his walking stick, he descended the steps to the cobbled street. As he turned toward Portman Square, a large, burly man detached himself from the shadowy alley beside the house and walked right up to him.
“Why ye nosin’ around ’ere, askin’ all them questions?”’ the man demanded, his grizzled face shoved close enough that Sebastian breathed in raw gin fumes. “And what’s yer business with Mr. Kane?”
The man had the look of an ex-prizefighter, with a broken nose and a cauliflower ear. In his late thirties or early forties now, he was beginning to run to fat. But he was still a powerful mountain of a man, standing a good half a head taller than Sebastian and with nearly half again his weight.
“I have a message for Mr. Kane from an old friend,” said Sebastian, tightening his grip on his walking stick.
The man’s lips pulled back to reveal broken brown teeth. “Mr. Kane don’t associate with the clientele. What is it ye really want? If ye ain’t ’ere to sample the merchandise, you’ve no business ’ere. It’s my job to make sure there’s no trouble in the ’ouse, and yer kind’s always trouble.” He reached out to crush Sebastian’s lapel in one meaty fist. “Don’t ye be comin’ back, ye ’ear? We don’t want yer kinda business ’ere.”
“You are creasing my coat,” said Sebastian.
“Yeah?” The man’s smile widened. “Maybe I ought to crease yer skull instead.”
Moving calmly and deliberately, Sebastian swung his walking stick back and then up, driving the full force of his body behind it. The ebony stick sliced up between the bouncer’s legs to whack against his testicles. The thug’s eyes bugged out, his breath
Gritting his teeth, the bouncer groped his right hand toward a long blade sheathed in leather at his side. Sebastian whacked the man’s wrist with the walking stick. The man howled and dropped the knife.
“That was not smart,” said Sebastian, shoving the length of the walking stick against the man’s throat, pinning him to the wall. “It’s also not a very nice way to treat a customer. I’ve a good mind to complain to Mr. Kane.” Sebastian tightened the pressure of the stick against the man’s windpipe. “Where can I find him?”
The man’s mouth hung open, slack with fear. “I cain’t tell ye that!”
Sebastian withdrew the walking stick from the man’s throat and swung it down to whack him across the right knee. The bouncer went down in a crooked, crumpled heap. “You might want to reconsider your reticence.”
The man lay with one hand splayed over his knee, the other hand still cupped protectively around his genitals. “I tell you, I don’t know!”
Sebastian lightly tapped the man’s other knee with the stick’s silver tip. “That’s not a very clever answer.”
The bouncer licked his lips. “He’s at the Black Dragon. In Dyot Street, near Meux’s Brewery.”
“How will I know him?”
“ ’E’s a good-looking cove. Copper-colored ’air. Spends most o’ ’is evenin’s in ’is office on the ’alf landing, paintin’.”
“Painting?”
“You know. Pictures. ’E likes paintin’ pictures o’ whores and o’ the river and the city.”
“I’d like my visit to Mr. Kane to be a surprise,” said Sebastian. “Let’s make a deal, shall we? You don’t tell him I’m coming, and I won’t tell him you’re the one who spilled the information that enabled me to find him. Do we understand each other?”
The bouncer wiped the back of one hand across his loose lips. “You bloody bastard—”
Sebastian thrust the tip of his walking stick beneath the man’s chin, forcing him to tilt his head back at an awkward angle. “Do we understand each other?”
“Aye, aye. Jist git that bloody stick away from me, will ye?”
Sebastian dropped the tip of his walking stick to the knife lying on the wet cobbles and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the blade clattering into the darkness of the alley. “Pull steel on me again and you’re dead.”
Chapter 12
Sebastian pushed his way through darkened streets crowded with ragged beggars and smocked workmen Shurrying home to their suppers. The air was heavy with the scent of boiling cabbage and frying onions, and it occurred to him in passing that he hadn’t eaten dinner himself. Appetite, like the desire for sleep, had eluded him for so long that he merely noted the passing of time without any accompanying urge to seek sustenance.
He was vaguely surprised to find himself involved, once again, in an investigation of murder. He’d survived the past eight months by tamping down all emotions—not just love and anger, but also curiosity and a desire for justice, even simple interest. He’d found lately that he could sometimes go as much as a day at a time without thinking about Kat, without remembering the scent that lingered on her pillow, without wanting her with an ache that left him ashamed and afraid.
But there was a reason he’d deadened himself with alcohol and sleeplessness these past months. It was as if one emotion were linked to the other. Open up to one, and the others came flooding back, out of control. He thought about the way he’d welcomed his encounter with the ex-pugilist of Orchard Street, and the realization troubled him. Violence could be seductive. He’d seen too many men lose themselves in the heady embrace of death and destruction during war. He knew what it could do to a man. What it had almost done to him, once. What it could do again.
