seein’ as how she ain’t got the sense God give a fencepost.” She cast him another assessing glance, then turned back to her tankards. “Last I saw her, she was in the yard.”
He found Hannah Green sitting cross-legged in a corner of the cobbled yard near the dilapidated stables, the fitful sun on her bowed bare head, her arms full of three wiggling, squirming black-and-white kittens. “Do look, Lord Devlin,” she said merrily when she saw him. “Aren’t they just the sweetest things you’ve ever seen? I always wanted a kitten.”
She was still wearing the spangled pink-and-white-striped gown, but without the rouge and the burgundy plumes, she looked even younger than before, no more than fifteen or sixteen at the most. Sebastian watched her laughingly peel one adventurous kitten off the top of her head, and it occurred to him that he was beginning to collect dependent females. He had no idea what he was going to do with either of them.
“If you can tear yourself away from the kittens,” he said, “I thought you might like to take another carriage ride.”
Hannah scrambled to her feet, her eyes going round. “Honest? Oooh. Let me just get my bonnet.”
Sebastian rescued the tumbling kittens and barely had time to restore them to the mother cat sunning herself atop a nearby moldering bed of hay before Hannah was back, the bedraggled plumed hat once more atop her auburn head, her reticule swinging from its fraying strings.
“Where we goin’?” she asked as she trustingly allowed herself to be handed up into Sebastian’s town carriage.
He swung up to take the forward seat. “You said you recognized the man who came to your rooms in the Haymarket and strangled Tasmin Poole. That he was one of the men who also hired you off the floor last week?”
“Y-yes,” she said, not sure where his questions were headed. “He was the tight-lipped one who picked us up from the Academy.”
“Tight-lipped?” asked Sebastian, diverted.
“Yeah. You know. He has those thin kinda lips he always keeps crimped together.” She held out both hands, thumbs pressed tightly to index fingers in what he supposed was meant to be an imitation of the killer’s mouth. “Like he was afraid a bug might crawl in there when he weren’t payin’ attention or somethin’.”
It was more than she’d said before. “And the man Rose Fletcher killed the next night, when the men came back—he was with the tight-lipped gentleman when he picked you up in the hackney?”
She nodded. She’d given up imitating the killer’s mouth and had taken to gnawing a fingernail instead, her gaze on the crowded streets and shop windows flashing past outside the carriage
“I’m interested in the third gentleman,” said Sebastian.
She craned her neck around to continue watching a hurdygurdy player with a monkey, who stood on a street corner. “You mean the birthday cove?”
“That’s right. The one who chose you when the men returned to the Academy the next night. Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”
Hannah swung her head to look at him, her eyes huge in an uncharacteristically solemn face. “I don’t want to see him again. I don’t want to see any of them again.”
“But you would recognize him.”
“Yes,” said Hannah around the fingernail in her mouth.
“That’s where we’re going now. To see if we can find him.”
She gave a startled laugh. “Go on with you. I hear tell there’s a million or more people in London. How you going to find one cove in amongst a million people?”
“There’s a coffeehouse in Cockspur Street called the Scarlet Man. Most officers in town—either active duty or half pay—wander in there at one point or another on a Sunday afternoon.”
“How’d you know they was military coves?”
He regarded her fixedly. “You knew they were military?” She’d never mentioned it.
She twitched one shoulder. “Yeah.”
“What else do you know that you haven’t told me?”
It came out more sharply than he’d intended. Her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t think it was important.”
The horses slowed. She shifted her gaze to the glazed front of the coffee shop that stood near Charing Cross. “You reckon the birthday cove is in there now?”
The coachman drew the carriage in close to the opposite curb. “If not, he’ll be here eventually. Can you see the door of the coffeehouse from where you are?”
She shifted her weight restlessly, her lower lip creeping out in the beginnings of a pout. “Aye.”
Suppressing a smile, Sebastian drew from his pocket the note he had prepared and signaled one of the footmen. “Find an urchin and give him a couple of shillings to deliver this to Captain Patrick Somerville in the Scarlet Man.”
“That’s right clever,” said Hannah, watching the footman turn away with the note. “What’s it say?”
“Only that the Captain is needed at his regiment.”
Her brows drew together under the strain of thought. “You reckon this Somerville is the birthday cove?”
“Does the name sound familiar?”
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t pay no attention to names.” Her frown deepened as she watched the footman hail a half-grown lad. “What if this Somerville ain’t there?”
