Sebastian hit the muddy ground with a painful grunt. Scrabbling around, he kicked out to free himself from the other man’s hold. Obadiah grabbed fistfuls of Sebastian’s coat, and the two men rolled together across the grassy verge and down a gentle incline to hit the murky surface of the pond with a splash. Sebastian felt the cold water closing over him and barely had time to suck in one last breath before his head went under.
He fought his way to the surface, feet scrabbling for purchase on the silty, shifting bottom. He swung around, breath coming in quick gasps, eyes filmed with water and mud and blood as he scanned the churning, rain-pocked surface of the pond, its far banks obscured by a haze of mist mingling with steam from the pounding engines of the waterworks.
He swiped his wet sleeve across his face and heard Obadiah rise up behind him with an angry roar. Before he could spin around, a massive arm clamped around Sebastian’s neck to slam him back against a chest as hard as one of the sides of beef hanging from a hook in Jack Slade’s butcher shop.
Sebastian could hear his own blood surging in his ears, feel the meaty strength of the other man’s forearm crushing his windpipe. He tried to pitch forward, but couldn’t. With his last strength he lurched backward and felt the big man’s feet shoot out from beneath him as his stance shifted on the treacherous, slippery bottom.
They both went under, the impact breaking them apart. Coming up fast, Sebastian staggered back toward the shore. He was about hip-deep in the water when Obadiah broke the surface, sputtering. Swinging around, Sebastian charged into him. Grabbing the lapels of the other man’s coat, Sebastian pushed him back and down again, and watched with grim satisfaction as the muddy water closed over the massive, hard-jawed face, the man’s eyes open and startled.
From somewhere he heard a shout, the sound of men splashing through mud and rain. Sebastian tightened his hold on Obadiah’s coat and held him beneath the cold, muddy surface of the pond.
Rough hands closed on Sebastian’s shoulders, loosening his grip. A red-bearded man with a wildly disordered neckcloth shoved his face into Sebastian’s line of vision. “Wot the ’ell ye doin’ there? Ye’re gonna kill ’im.”
Sebastian felt Obadiah slip from his grasp. Sebastian lurched after him, but two more men had appeared by now to lay hold of Sebastian. They dragged him back toward the shore, where the silent form of the jarvey lay stretched out in the mud beside the hackney.
The rain fell from the sky in a roar that mingled with the droning thunder of the steam engines. Breaking free of the men’s hold, Sebastian swung around to look back at the pond. A white mist swirled across the still, empty water.
Obadiah had disappeared.
“The hackney belongs to a man by the name of Miles Buckley,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy. He was standing in the doorway of Sebastian’s dressing room, watching Sebastian wince as Calhoun applied a clean sticking plaster to the cut above Sebastian’s eye. “A small, bandy-legged Liverpudlian of some sixty years of age.”
“What does he have to say?” asked Sebastian, stretching to his feet. He was dressed in black evening knee breeches, black silk stockings, and a white silk waistcoat. Outside, the rain had finally begun to clear, the sun peeking from beneath the heavy clouds as it slipped below the horizon.
“Very little. He was found insensible from a blow to the head, in a lane behind the White Horse Inn, in Church Street.”
Sebastian reached for a snowy white neckcloth. “Will he recover?”
“Oh, yes. A slight dent in his crown is all. He’s a tough old codger.”
Sebastian grunted, his chin held aloft as he adjusted the folds of his cravat.
Lovejoy said, “I believe your assailants must have followed you to Chelsea, then availed themselves of Mr. Buckley’s hackney, leaving him incapacitated while they shadowed you from Cheyne Walk and waited until you were ready to depart for London.”
“A scheme into which I stepped like a regular Johnny Flat.” Lovejoy cleared his throat. “Not exactly. The individual who was driving the hackney won’t be waylaying any more fairs. You killed him.”
“Good.”
“A coroner’s inquest will be held, of course, but there’s no doubt his death will be found a simple case of self-defense. We’ve set the local constables to searching the ponds of the waterworks and the riverbank beyond, but Mr. Obidiah Slade appears to have made good his escape.”
“He’ll be back,” said Sebastian, reaching for his coat.
Lovejoy cleared his throat again. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
That night, Sebastian prowled the playgrounds of the
He was in the flower-decked ballroom of a house on Cav endish Square belonging to the Duke of Isling, his gaze narrowed against the haze of hundreds of beeswax candles, when he heard a woman’s familiar voice say, “Good heavens, it is you, Devlin. Bayard swore he’d seen you, but I’d hoped he was simply suffering the effects of too much of Isling’s punch.”
Sebastian turned to meet his sister’s icy blue stare. “Hello, Amanda.”
Amanda, Lady Wilcox, was a tall woman, thin and fair like their mother, although she looked too much like Hendon to have ever been pretty, even when she was young. Twelve years Sebastian’s senior, she was in her early forties now. Even when they were children, she had never made the least effort to disguise her acute dislike of her youngest brother. Now, watching her lip curl, her nostrils flare with disdain, Sebastian found himself wondering if she had always known—or at least suspected—the ugly secrets swirling around his conception.
“I hear you’re at it again,” she said, her head turning as she let her gaze scan the crowded dance floor. She could bear to look at him for only a limited amount of time. “Involving yourself in the sordid details of a murder investigation, like some grubby little Bow Street Runner.”
Following her gaze, Sebastian watched his niece, Stephanie Wilcox, coming down the set of the country dance on the arm of Lord Smallbone. Just finishing her first London Season at the age of eighteen, Stephanie was everything Amanda had never been: delicate and winsome and breathtakingly beautiful . . . and so much like Sebastian’s long-vanished mother, Sophie, that it made his chest ache just to look at her.
Earlier in the Season there’d been talk of a match between the young Miss Wilcox and Smallbone. But no announcement had as yet been forthcoming, and Sebastian knew Amanda was growing anxious. “What’s the matter, Amanda?” he said gently. “Worried I’ll somehow scuttle my niece’s chances of landing a good catch?”
He had the satisfaction of seeing an angry flush touch his sister’s cheeks. “Don’t be vulgar,” she snapped. “Although I don’t suppose you can help it.”
“Oh? Why’s that, Amanda?”
Her lips tightened into a thin line. Rather than answer, she simply turned and left him staring after her, and wondering what she knew, and how she knew it.
“An interesting display of sibling affection,” said Miss Hero Jarvis, walking up to him. “Or lack thereof.”
She wore a stunning sapphire blue gown of satin trimmed with velvet ribbons, and was regarding him with her frank, faintly amused gray eyes.
“Definitely a ‘lack thereof,’ ” he said dryly. The country dance came to an end with a flourish, disgorging a wave of flushed and perspiring dancers upon them. “Here,” he said, cupping a hand beneath her elbow to draw her away from the crush.
“I thought you made it a practice to avoid these functions,” she said, gently removing her arm from his grasp.
“Actually, I was looking for you.”
“Then you’re fortunate to have found me. I’m here only because I was looking for Lord Quillian. The Duchess of Isling is his sister. Or didn’t you know?”
“No,” said Sebastian, who relied on his aunt Henrietta to remind him of the intricate familial ties that bound one member of the Upper Ten Thousand to the next. “And precisely why, Miss Jarvis, were you searching for Lord
