abigail, Marie, followed languidly behind—thankful, Hero suspected, for the moderating effect Sabrina’s presence had on Hero’s normally brisk pace.
They spoke for a time of Alexander Ross, and Sabrina’s grief, and her inability to respond with enthusiasm to Jasper Cox’s plans to remove to the seaside for a few weeks.
Hero said, “I suppose you must find some comfort in your music.”
Sabrina choked back a sob. “I haven’t been able to play since I heard ... since I knew . . .” Her voice trailed away.
Hero reached out to touch her cousin’s shoulder in an awkward but sincere gesture of comfort. “It will come back, eventually. I know it will.” Then, feeling profoundly dishonest, even contemptibly sly, she added, “You play the harp, don’t you?”
Sabrina shook her head. “Pianoforte.”
“Of course. How could I have forgotten?”
Hero stared off across the park, to where the waters of the Serpentine glinted in the distance. She had never actually believed sweet, dainty Sabrina capable of wrapping a harp wire around a man’s neck and twisting it until his face turned purple and the veins in his eyeballs burst.
Hero wasn’t so sure about Jasper.
Hero said, “Were you by chance acquainted with a French emigre named Antoine de La Rocque?”
“De La Rocque? I don’t believe so. Why? Who is he?”
“He was a collector of old and rare books.”
Sabrina frowned. “A rather peculiar-looking man with a long neck and a small head?”
Hero glanced at her in surprise. “Yes, that’s he. So you did know him?”
“I met him once, when I was with Alexander.” She sucked in a quick breath, her eyes widening with sudden comprehension. “You said he ‘was’ a collector of old books. Why? What has happened to him?”
“He was killed yesterday.”
Sabrina shuddered and turned so alarmingly pale that for a moment Hero worried she might faint. “You mean, murdered?”
Hero eyed her warily. “Yes. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to distress you. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Sabrina swallowed hard and shook her head. “No. You were right to tell me.” She walked on in silence for a moment, her gaze on an old-fashioned closed carriage pulled by a pair of showy dapple grays that was drawing abreast of them at a sedate pace. The park was largely deserted at this hour; they could see only some children laughingly playing chase under the watchful gaze of a nursemaid, and a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in fashionable trousers and a black coat walking briskly toward them.
“Hero,” said Sabrina, as if suddenly coming to a decision, “there’s something I need to tell you—”
She broke off with a frightened gasp as the tall gentleman reached out to seize her arm, spin her around, and slam her back against his chest. In his left hand he held a pistol, its muzzle pressed against Sabrina’s temple.
“Do anything stupid,” he said to Hero, his rough accent at decided variance with his natty clothes, “and yer cousin here gets popped. Understand?”
Hero held herself perfectly still, although she could feel her heart pounding wildly in her chest. “I understand.”
Hero’s maid, Marie, had come to an abrupt halt a few feet away, her eyes wide in a sickly pale face.
“It’s all right,” Hero told Sabrina calmly. “They won’t hurt you.” She cast a quick glance at her abigail. “Marie, stay where you are.”
She was aware of the showy grays coming to a stop beside them. The door of the ancient carriage flew open. Another man—his buff coat well tailored but ill fitting, his cravat clumsily tied—leapt out to seize Hero’s arm in an ungentle grip. “Yer comin’ wit’ us,” he hissed. He tried to drag her back toward the carriage, but he was a good head shorter than Hero, and slight.
“I will not,” she said.
The first man pulled back the hammer of his pistol. “Do what yer told.”
“Hero!” screamed Sabrina, lunging against his hold.
“I’ll go with you on two conditions,” said Hero.
“Oh, ye will, will ye?” jeered the buff-coated man, shoving his beard-roughened, tobacco-stained face unappetizingly close to hers. “And what are yer
“My cousin is allowed to leave safely.”
The black-coated man with the pistol laughed. “And?”
Hero glanced down at the broken, dirt-encrusted nails digging into the fine cloth of her walking dress. “You take your filthy hand off my arm.”
“What the devil is going on?” he demanded when the harried butler finally answered his peal.
“I beg your pardon, my lord,” said Grisham, his normally impassive face ashen, “but I am not at liberty to —”
“If that’s Devlin,” boomed Lord Jarvis’s gravelly voice from the back of the house, “send him in. Now.”
Sebastian followed the butler through a hall filled with milling servants, Bow Street Runners, and the steely- eyed, former-military-looking types Jarvis tended to favor for doing his dirty work. From somewhere abovestairs came the sound of hysterical weeping that inexplicably raised the hairs on the back of Sebastian’s neck.
Lord Jarvis stood before the great empty hearth of his library, surrounded by a throng similar to that in the hall. “Leave us,” he snapped. He waited until the others had filed from the room, then shut the door and said to Sebastian, “Hero has been taken. She was walking with her cousin in the park when they were set upon. It appears that at least two men were involved, plus a coachman.”
Sebastian knew a strange numbing sensation of disbelief. As if from a great distance, he heard himself say, “Both young women were seized?”
Jarvis shook his head. “Only Hero—and her abigail. Not Miss Cox.”
Sebastian took a deep breath, and when that didn’t help the sudden, crushing ache in his chest, he took another. “Their object is obviously not ransom,” he said, walking over to pour himself a brandy. His voice came out calm, even cold, but the hand that reached for the carafe was not quite steady.
“Obviously,” snapped Jarvis. The Jarvises might be an ancient and powerful family, but most of their wealth was tied up in land. For anyone interested in extorting a fortune, Miss Cox would have been the more logical target.
Sebastian sloshed a generous measure of amber liquid into a glass. “Is it an attempt to influence you on some looming policy decision, do you think?”
“I’ve received no demands.”
Sebastian threw him a long, cold look. “I’ll take you at your word.”
A flare of rage, primitive and uncharacteristically out of control, flared in the big man’s eyes. “Damn you, you impudent bastard. This is my daughter we’re talking about. My
Sebastian stared across the room at his prospective father-in-law. Once, he would have said that Charles, Lord Jarvis cared about nothing beyond his own power and the security of England and the House of Hanover. In that, Sebastian now realized, he’d been mistaken.
“I will remind you,” he said quietly, “that she is also my affianced wife.”
“This is because of you.” Jarvis punched the air between them with an accusatory finger. “You and this mad, quixotic quest of yours for ‘justice.’ You have no idea what you’ve mixed yourself up in this time. No idea whatsoever.”
Sebastian set aside his brandy untasted. “What the devil are you saying? That Ross was involved in
