on the floor. He was aware of his vision darkening around the edges. The strength in his grip ebbed.
Slade reared up, the crown of his head butting into Sebastian’s forehead. Sebastian reeled back, his blood- slicked fingers losing their grip on the butcher’s wrist.
Lurching sideways, Slade swung the cleaver at Sebastian’s head. Sebastian jerked out of the way. The heavy blade sank into the wooden frame of the old green shutter beside him, and stuck there.
Face streaked with sweat and blood and sawdust, Slade rocked the cleaver’s handle, trying to free it. Sebastian slammed the heel of his boot into the side of the butcher’s head, knocking him back. Sebastian closed his own left hand on the cleaver’s handle. Levering the blade free of the wood, he swung around just as Jack Slade charged.
The blade made an ugly
His breath soughing in his throat, Sebastian sank back against the blood-spattered wall. He sat for a moment, his heart beating hard against his rib cage, the blood from his sliced arm pooling on the floorboards beside him. Then he yanked the cravat from around his neck and bound it tightly around his arm.
“You’re lucky,” said Gibson, setting a neat row of stitches along the nasty slash in Sebastian’s forearm. “A fraction deeper and he’d have severed an artery. A trifle to the right and you might have lost the use of your hand.”
Sebastian had stripped down to his torn, blood-soaked shirt and breeches and was sitting perched on one end of the long, narrow table in the front room of Gibson’s surgery. He took a deep pull from the open bottle of brandy he gripped in one white-knuckled fist, and kept his jaw set.
“Hurts, does it?” said Gibson with what sounded suspiciously like malicious satisfaction. He tied off his thread and reached for a roll of bandages. “You think it’s true, then? Slade was blackmailing the Bishop?”
“I don’t think there’s much doubt about it. The question is, what secret was the Bishop paying Slade to keep?”
“That Francis Prescott killed his brother in the crypt of St. Margaret’s thirty years ago?” Gibson suggested, wrapping the bandage around his handiwork.
“I don’t think so. I keep going back to the way Slade laughed when he heard Sir Nigel had been found down in that crypt.”
“If you hadn’t killed him, you could have asked him.”
“If I hadn’t killed him, he would have killed
“There is that.”
Sebastian took another deep swallow of brandy. “Miss Jarvis knew Prescott was being blackmailed. She just didn’t know by whom. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know why.”
Gibson tied off the bandage and handed Sebastian the torn, bloody remnant of his coat. “If you’re planning on going to see her, you might consider stopping by Brook Street first for a new rig.”
Sebastian grunted and eased his arm into what was left of his sleeve.
“And whatever you do, don’t drive those chestnuts of yours,” said the surgeon, fashioning him a sling. “Or the grays. Either stick to hackneys, or let Tom or Giles drive you. You need to give that arm a rest. Overdo things and you could end up losing the use of that hand after all.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, Tom is nursing an injury of his own.”
“I had a look at Tom’s shoulder this afternoon. The young heal quickly. If you ask me, this forced inactivity is doing him more harm than good. Besides, it’s not like he’ll be in any danger. Obadiah’s dead.”
“And if it wasn’t Obadiah who shot at us the other night?”
Gibson picked up the bowl of bloody water and pile of soiled linen. “Somehow I can’t imagine William Franklin lurking in some Brook Street area steps waiting to take a shot at you. It was Obadiah.”
Sebastian held his own counsel. But he wasn’t convinced.
Chapter 39
He found Miss Jarvis surrounded by piles of books and papers, and seated at the dark, heavy table in the library of the house on Berkeley Square.
She wore a simple gown of pale yellow cambric made high at the neck and trimmed with delicate touches of white lace, and she had her head bent over some notes she was making, so that the afternoon sunlight streaming in the tall paned window overlooking the garden fell warmly on her brown hair. At Sebastian’s entrance, she looked up and laid aside her quill, her face studied in its calm repose. He searched her even features for some indication that his suspicions might be true. But if she found his presence a cause for concern, she did not show it.
“Lord Devlin,” announced the butler, hovering nervously, obviously uncertain of the wisdom of abandoning her to the company of such a dangerous visitor.
“You can tell him I promise not to abduct you,” said Sebastian, going to where a carafe of Lord Jarvis’s best brandy rested on a tray.
A suggestion of amusement lightened her features. “Thank you, Grisham. That will be all.”
Sebastian poured himself a drink and downed it in one long pull.
“Do help yourself to some brandy,” she said sardonically.
He refilled his glass. “Thank you.”
Her gaze lingered for a moment on his sling. But rather than remark on it, she pushed to her feet and began assembling her papers.
He said, “Embarking on a new project, Miss Jarvis?”
“Actually, it occurs to me that perhaps you are right, that I have focused too single-mindedly on Lord Quillian. So I’ve decided to pursue several other theories.”
He strolled over to study the title of the nearest tome. “
A malevolent gleam darkened her fine gray eyes. She tweaked the book from his grasp and slipped it back on a shelf. “Did you know that before her marriage to Sir Nigel, Lady Prescott eloped with another man?”
“The unsuitable suitor. My dear Miss Jarvis, have you by chance discovered his identity?”
“Not by chance, my lord. But I have discovered his identity. Lieutenant Marc Hatfield, third son of Lord Bixby.”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Hatfield. He was killed at Yorktown.”
Sebastian stared thoughtfully at his brandy. “In other words, he predeceased Sir Nigel by nearly a year.”
She nodded. “When I first learned of the elopement, I thought the disappointed suitor might have been responsible for Sir Nigel’s death. Obviously, that was impossible.”
There was something about the airy way in which this was said that told Sebastian more than he suspected she’d intended. He took a sip of his brandy and said with quiet amusement, “You thought the unsuitable suitor was Quillian, didn’t you?”
A faint hint of color touched her cheeks, but all she said was, “What happened to your arm?”
“An unpleasant encounter with a butcher and his meat cleaver.”
“A
“A man by the name of Jack Slade. Ever hear of him?”
She shook her head. “Should I have?”
“Last Wednesday, you told me you thought someone was blackmailing Bishop Prescott. As it happens, you were correct. Only it wasn’t Quillian. It was Jack Slade.”
“The butcher.”
“The butcher.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“But I am. You see, this particular butcher grew up on the Grange and nursed a powerful grudge against the
