The sound of a carriage pulling up in the street outside drew Sebastian’s attention. Even before he heard the knock on the door, before he heard the lilt of her voice as she spoke to Mrs. Federico, he knew it was Kat.
She came in, bringing with her the scent of the night and the promise of more rain. She wore a sapphire blue carriage dress with cream braided trim and a matching pelisse, and as she paused on the threshold to Gibson’s front room, the exquisite peacock feather of her jaunty blue hat curled down from the brim to rest against her pale cheek. He knew she hadn’t expected to find him here.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, her gaze focused resolutely on Gibson. “I see you’re busy. I’ll come back later.”
She turned to go, but Gibson said, “No, wait. Let me just empty this and I’ll be back.” Picking up the basin of bloody water and soiled cloths, he walked out of the room.
Her gaze fell to the bandage on Sebastian’s arm. “I’d heard you were wounded.”
“It’s just a cut.”
“You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t.” He slid off the edge of the table but made no move to approach her. They stared at each other across the width of the room. “Do you come here often?” he asked. “To see Gibson?”
“Sometimes.”
They fell silent. For one stolen moment he lost himself in looking at her, at the familiar childlike tilt of her nose and the full curve of her lips. He would have sworn that the very air quivered with an aching awareness of all they had once been to each other and all that they could never be again.
She said, “I must go.” But still she lingered, her gaze on his. And he knew then with a quiet rush of despair that both this love and this pain would always be a part of him.
And a part of her.
Later that evening, Hero received a courteous note from Viscount Devlin briefly detailing for her benefit the day’s events and the circumstances surrounding the Magdalene House killings. He told her of the quarrel between Rachel and Tristan Ramsey, but without the knowledge Hero had acquired from Lady Sewell, Rachel’s subsequent flight would still have made no sense. She had no doubt that Devlin himself knew of Lord Fairchild’s dark secret, and it irked her that Devlin had thought to protect her by withholding the information from her.
She held the crisp white sheet of his letter a moment too long, then resolutely thrust it into the library fire before her. She was still in the library, curled up in an overstuffed chair beside the fire and lost in the contemplation of the dancing flames, when she felt her father’s gaze upon her. She looked up to find him watching her from the doorway.
“No book?” he said. His lips smiled, but his eyes were narrow with concern.
She shifted uncomfortably beneath his regard, as if he might somehow detect the dangerous drift of her thoughts, just by looking at her. To forestall him, she said, “I heard Patrick Somerville is dead. Did you have him killed?”
“No. It was my intention to do so, but he managed to beat me to it. Quinine and arsenic can be a deadly combination.”
“He killed himself?”
“Probably. Although for the sake of his father, it will be ruled an accident.”
She tipped her head back against the seat cushion. “So many deaths,” she said quietly. “Any decision yet on who’ll replace Perceval?”
Jarvis snorted. “I left Prinny and the rest arguing over whether to offer the premiership to Canning or Castlereagh. A moot point, since neither man will take it. Between Bonaparte and the Americans, this is a damnable time to be without a prime minister. Perceval might have been an ineffectual idiot, but he was better than no one.”
“Will there be any repercussions from today’s events?” she asked with studied casualness. “To Devlin’s killing of Epson-Smith, I mean.”
“Hardly. Epson-Smith attacked him. Oh, there’ll be some talk, of course. But then, there is always talk about Devlin. It will die down eventually.” He stared at her for so long it took all of her sangfroid to continue holding his gaze. “Devlin said there were three attempts on your life. I am only aware of two.”
His enemies credited him with such omniscience that she’d worried he might somehow come to learn of those disastrous hours in the vaults beneath the ruined gardens of the old Somerset House. It was a relief to know that he had not. Perhaps, with time, she herself would be able to forget for days at a time that it had occurred. “There was no third attempt.”
“You lie well,” he said, coming toward her, “but not well enough yet to deceive me.”
Tipping back her head, she gave him a soft smile. “No one can deceive you, Papa.”
“Not for long. Remember that,” he said. Reaching out, he touched her cheek, briefly, with his knuckles. It was the closest he ever came to a gesture of affection. Or an apology.
It was the Earl of Hendon’s habit every morning that he was in London to rise early and exercise his big gray in Hyde Park before breakfast.
On the Tuesday following the death of Spencer Perceval, the mist lay heavily on the rain-drenched grass. But the air held a new crispness, a promise of the vital energy of a spring too long delayed in coming. Turning his black Arabian mare through the gates to the park, Sebastian could see the Earl trotting briskly up the Row, his body rising and falling in rhythmic precision with his horse’s easy action.
For a moment, Sebastian checked, the familiar drumming of the gray’s hooves on the earth reverberating in the ghostly stillness. The urge to wheel the mare’s head and simply ride away was strong. But still he sat, his reins held in a clenched fist.
