Miss Jarvis glanced up, half frowning and half laughing, as if uncertain whether to believe him or not. “Kittens?”
“Kittens.” He studied her clear gray eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek. He considered telling her about the harp player and about Patrick Somerville, then changed his mind. The less he involved her in all this, the better.
She said, “What will become of her, when this is over?”
“Hannah?” He shook his head. “I’m not certain. In many ways she’s still a child.”
“But not in all ways.” He knew she regretted her words the instant she said them. For one frozen moment, their gazes met and held. She set her plate aside. “Thank you for the refreshments,” she said, and turned on her heel and left him there, looking after her.
By the time Sebastian made his way back to the ballroom, Patrick Somerville had disappeared. Sebastian prowled the conservatory and the rooms set aside for card playing, before finally wandering out onto the terrace to find the hussar captain leaning against the stone balustrade and smoking a cheroot.
“Nasty habit I picked up in the Americas,” said Somerville, blowing a cloud of blue smoke out of his lungs. “My sister Mary keeps telling me it’ll be the death of me, but I tell her the malaria’ll kill me long before then.”
Sebastian came to stand beside him and look out over the glistening wet garden. The rain had eased up, but the air was still chill and damp and smelled strongly of wet earth and wet stone. “I hear they’ve found your friend’s body.”
Somerville drew on his cheroot, his eyes narrowing. “Yes, poor old sod.”
“I understand he had a pair of sewing scissors broken off in his heart.”
The hussar turned his head to stare directly at Sebastian. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From the surgeon who performed the postmortem.” Sebastian kept his gaze on the garden. “A man killed at the Orchard Street Academy last week was stabbed by a pair of sewing scissors.”
Somerville drew on his cheroot, and said nothing.
Sebastian said, “How many bodies do you think have turned up in London in the past year with pairs of sewing scissors broken off in their hearts?”
The captain tossed the stub of his cheroot into the wet garden below, then pursed his lips, expelling a long stream of fragrant smoke. “You know I was there, too, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Somerville flattened his hands on the wet balustrade, his back hunched as he stared out over the shadowy gardens. “I still don’t understand what happened that night. First the girl I was with disappeared. And then, when I went looking for Ludlow, they said he’d already gone.”
“You believed them?”
“Why wouldn’t I? We were supposed to meet up later, at a tavern near Soho. I went there expecting to find him waiting for me. But he never showed up. At first I thought he’d simply changed his mind and gone home. It wasn’t until he was still missing the next day that I realized something had gone wrong. I thought he’d been jumped by footpads or something. I never imagined he hadn’t even left the Academy.”
“Who else was with you that night?”
“No one.” He pushed away from the balustrade. “What’s your interest in this, anyway?”
From the ballroom behind them came the lilting chorus of an English country dance. Sebastian said, “I’m just doing a favor for an acquaintance.” He studied the man’s pale face, clammy with sweat despite the chill from the rain. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: When’s your birthday?”
“My birthday?” Somerville gave a shaky laugh. “Why do you ask?”
“It was last week, was it?”
A muscle jumped along the man’s tightened jaw as he considered his answer. “Yes,” he said slowly, realizing the futility of denying it. “Why?”
“Happy birthday,” Sebastian said, and walked off into the night.
“Unfortunately, you’ve no real proof,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy. They were seated beside the cold hearth in the magistrate’s simple parlor on Russell Square. A fire would have helped take the chill off the damp night, but Lovejoy never allowed a fire to be kindled in his house outside the kitchen after the first of April. Sebastian knew that for Lovejoy, it wasn’t a matter of frugality so much as a question of moral fiber.
Sebastian poured himself another cup of hot tea and said, “Hannah Green identified Patrick Somerville.”
“As a customer. There’s no law against paying a woman for a moment’s physical gratification, however morally repugnant it might be. She didn’t see him kill anyone. And even if she had, who’d take the word of a soiled dove against that of a hussar captain wounded in the defense of his country?”
“He wasn’t wounded. He has malaria.”
“I think I’d rather be wounded.”
“Frankly, so would I.” Sebastian took a sip of his tea and wished it were something stronger. “There’s still the harp player. She heard the men who attacked the Academy last night. If Somerville was one of them—and I strongly suspect he was—she would recognize his voice. If we can set up a situation in which she can hear him—”
“No jury would convict a hussar captain on the strength of testimony given by a blind woman who played the harp in a brothel.”
Sebastian knew a welling of frustration. Lovejoy was right, of course. But there had to be a way. . . . “The girl who worked in the cheesemonger’s shop across from the Magdalene House might recognize him. She noticed
