everything.”
O’Brian tore off a piece of bread and used it to wipe up the egg yolk on his plate. “A man doesn’t stay in this business long if he doesn’t learn to keep his mouth shut. I’m not that careless.” He popped the bread in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “If I was, I’d be in Botany Bay. Or dead.”
“Mistakes happen.”
“Not if you’re careful. I’m very careful. I’m also not a violent man. Ask around the docks; anyone will tell you. Sure, I have a temper. My father was Irish, after all.” He leaned forward. “But a body’d have to be sick to kill all those women.”
“Or very afraid.”
O’Brian met Sebastian’s gaze, and held it. “There’s nothing I’m that afraid of.”
Sebastian took a long sip of his tea. “Kane tells me you wanted to buy Rose out of the house, but she refused.”
“He said that?”
“Are you saying it’s not true?”
“Are you kidding? Of course she was willing. She hated Kane, and she hated that house.”
“Do you think that’s why she ran away? Because of Kane?”
“What would be the sense in that? I was getting her out of there.” O’Brian leaned his elbows on the table, his linked hands coming up to tap against his chin. “The only thing I can figure is something must have happened. Something that scared her. She just bolted.”
“So why didn’t she bolt to you?”
“Maybe she figured she’d be too easy to trace.” A wry smile tightened the flesh beside his eyes. “Didn’t take you long to find me, now did it?”
Sebastian studied the agent’s dark, handsome face. “Ian Kane says her departure meant nothing to him. That she was easily replaced.”
O’Brian huffed a humorless laugh. “What do you think? I was about to pay him two hundred pounds for her.” He leaned forward. He was no longer smiling. “It sets a bad example for the other girls, now doesn’t it? Her taking off like that. I don’t know what he told you. But the truth is, he was livid when he found out she’d run away. Said if he ever got his hands on her again, he’d kill her.”
Chapter 29
Ian Kane sat on a folding stool amidst the tumbledown tombs and overgrown headstones of the churchyard of All-hallows Barking, a paintbrush in one hand, a flat palette smeared with paint in the other. Balanced on the easel before him stood the canvas on which the north face of the church was beginning to emerge in a glory of sun-washed golds and blues and reds. Sebastian squinted up at the billowing clouds building overhead and said, “You’re about to lose your sun.”
“This is England,” said Kane, his gaze on the church before him. “I always lose my sun.”
Sebastian watched the brothel owner load his paintbrush with gold. “I’d have thought a gloomy day more suited to your subject.”
“You would,” said Kane.
Sebastian gave a sharp laugh. The church was a curious blend of styles and materials, the massive round pillars and Gothic arches of the west end dating back to the thirteenth century, while the eastern end was much more recent, with a brick steeple that had been added only a hundred fifty years before.
“I was eight when I started in the mines,” said Kane, squinting at the point where the church’s old staircase turret wound toward a roof badly in need of replacement. “I was lucky. Most lads go down when they’re only six— some as young as four. I was a pony boy. Did you know that they keep those poor beasts down in the mines until they die? Their hooves turn green. It’s unnatural, stabling horses a mile underground so they never see the sun.” He added a fleck of light to the painted turret on the canvas. “I like the sun.”
The air filled with a gentle cooing from the pigeons roosting on the steeple. Kane painted for a few moments, then said, “What brings you sniffing around me again?”
Sebastian leaned against the edge of a nearby lichen-covered tomb. “I found Luke O’Brian.”
“That didn’t take long. Did he confess to the murders?”
“No. But he provided me with some interesting information. He says Rose Fletcher was more than happy to let him buy her out of your house.”
Kane added a touch of blue to a clerestory window. “I don’t buy and sell women. You make me sound like some bloody Yank.”
Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and leaned back. “Right. You were simply going to let O’Brian pay the woman’s debts—with a handsome commission for you, of course.”
“It’s the English way, isn’t it—commissions?”
“He also said you weren’t as sanguine as you would have me believe about her precipitous departure. He says you were furious that she’d left. Furious enough to threaten to kill her if you found her.”
Kane shrugged. “It’s an easy thing to say, isn’t it?
“Some do.”
“I had no reason to kill her. Rose was a good source of revenue but she wasn’t irreplaceable. What good
