Margaret cleared her throat and touched the back of her knuckles to her nostrils, her formidable composure slamming once more into place. `A what?'
`An antiquary. A scholar of antiquities. You never heard Miss Tennyson speak of any such person?'
`No.'
`How about the children? Did they ever mention anyone? Anyone at all they might have met in London?'
She stared back at him, her face pale, her eyes wide.
Sebastian said, `There is someone. Tell me.'
`I don't know his name. The lads always called him the Lieutenant.'
`He's a lieutenant?'
`Aye.' Her lip curled. `Some Frenchy.'
`Where did the children meet this French lieutenant?'
`Miss Tennyson would oftentimes take the lads to the park of an evening. I think they'd see him there.'
`They saw him often?'
`Aye. Him and his dog.'
`The Lieutenant has a dog?'
`Aye. The lads are mad about dogs, you know.'
`When did they first begin mentioning this lieutenant?'
`Ach, it must have been six weeks or more ago... not long after we first arrived in London, I'd say.'
`That's all you can tell me about him? That he's a Frenchman and a lieutenant and that he has a dog?'
`He may've been in the cavalry. I can't be certain, mind you, but it's only since we've come to London that Master George has suddenly been all agog to join the Army. He's forever galloping around the schoolroom slashing a wooden sword through the air and shouting, Charge! and, At em, lads!'
`Any idea where this lieutenant might have seen service?
`To be honest, I didn't like to pay too much heed to young Master George when he'd start going on about it. Couldn't see any sense in encouraging the lad. The Reverend's already told him he's bound for Eton next year. Besides, it didn't seem right, somehow, him being so friendly with a Frenchy.'
Sebastian said, `Many émigrés have fought valiantly against Napoléon.'
`Whoever said he was an émigré?' She gave a scornful laugh. `A prisoner on his parole, he is. And only the good Lord knows how many brave Englishmen he sent to their graves before he was took prisoner.'
Sebastian went to lean on the terrace railing overlooking the river. The tide was out, a damp, fecund odor rising from the expanse of mudflats exposed along the bank below as the sun began its downward arc toward the west. An aged Gypsy woman in a full purple skirt and yellow kerchief was telling fortunes beside a man with a painted cart selling hot sausages near the steps. Beyond them, a string of constables could be seen poking long probes into the mud, turning over logs and bits of flotsam left stranded by the receding water. At first Sebastian wondered what they were doing. Then he realized they must be searching for the children or what was left of them.
He twisted around to stare back at the imposing row of eighteenth-century town houses that rose above the terrace. The disappearance of the two young children added both an urgency and a troubling new dimension to the murder of Gabrielle Tennyson. Had the boys, too, fallen victim to Gabrielle's killer? For the same reason? Or were the children simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? And if they hadn't suffered the same fate as their cousin, then where were they now?
Sebastian brought his gaze back to the top of the steps, his eyes narrowing as he studied the thin, drab- coated man buying a sausage from the cart.
It was the same man he'd seen earlier, at Tower Hill.
Bloody hell.
Pushing away from the railing, Sebastian strolled toward the sausage seller. Pocketing the drab-coated man's coin, the sausage seller handed the man a paper-wrapped sausage. Without seeming to glance in Sebastian's direction, the man took a bite of his sausage and began to walk away.
He was a tallish man, with thin shoulders and a round hat he wore pulled low on his face. Sebastian quickened his step.
He was still some ten feet away when the man tossed the sausage aside and broke into a run.
Chapter 10
The man sprinted around the edge of the terrace and dropped out of sight.
Sebastian tore after him, down a crowded, steeply cobbled lane lined with taverns and narrow coffeehouses that emptied abruptly onto the sun-splashed waterfront below. A flock of white gulls rose, screeching, to wheel high above the broad, sparkling river.
The genteel houses of the Adelphi Terrace had been constructed over a warren of arch-fronted subterranean vaults built to span the slope between the Strand and the wharves along the river. Sebastian could hear the man's booted feet pounding over the weathered planking as he darted around towering pyramids of wine casks and dodged blue-smocked workmen unloading sacks of coal from a barge. Then the buff-coated man threw one quick look over his shoulder and dove under the nearest archway to disappear into the gloomy world beneath the terrace.
Hell and the devil confound it, thought Sebastian, swerving around a mule cart.
`Hey!' shouted a grizzled man in a cap and leather apron as the mule between the traces of his cart snorted and kicked.
`What the bloody ell ye doin?'
Sebastian kept running.
One behind the other, Sebastian and the drab-coated man raced through soaring, catacomblike arches, the bricks furred with soot and mold and perpetual dampness. They sprinted down dark tunnels of warehouses tenanted by wine sellers and coal merchants, and up dimly lit passages off which opened stables that reeked of manure and dirty straw, where cows lowed plaintively from out of the darkness.
`Who the hell are you?' Sebastian shouted as the man veered around a rotten water butt, toward the dark opening of a narrow staircase that wound steeply upward. `Who?'
Without faltering, the man clambered up the stairs, Sebastian at his heels. Round and round they went, only to erupt into a steeply sloping corridor paved with worn bricks and lined with milk cans.
Breathing hard and fast, the man careened from side to side, upending first one milk can, then another and another, the cans rattling and clattering as they bounced down the slope like giant bowling pins, filling the air with the hot splash of spilling milk.
`God damn it,' swore Sebastian, dodging first one can, then the next. Then his boots hit the slick wet bricks and his feet shot out from under him. He went down hard, slamming his shoulder against a brick pier as he slid back down the slope and the next milk can bounced over his head.
He pushed up, the leather soles of his boots slipping so that he nearly went down again. He could hear the man's running footsteps disappearing around the bend up ahead.
Panting heavily now, Sebastian tore around the corner and out a low archway into the unexpected sunlight of the open air. He threw up one hand to shade his suddenly blinded eyes, his step faltering.
The lane stretched empty and silent before him.
The man was gone.
After leaving Carlton House, Hero spent the next several hours at a bookseller's in Westminster, where she selected several items, one of which proved to be very old and rare. Then, sending her purchases home in the charge of a footman, she directed her coachman to the British Museum.
It was at an exhibition of Roman sarcophagi at the British Museum that Hero had first met Gabrielle Tennyson some six years before. Initially, their interaction had been marked more by politeness than by cordiality. Both might be gently born, well-educated women, but they belonged to vastly different worlds. For while the Jarvises were an ancient noble family with powerful connections, Gabrielle Tennyson came from a long line of
