door. A single brace of candles burned on the mantel; the rest of the room lay in shadow. He listened to her low- voiced consultation with Morey. Then she appeared at the entrance to the library, one gloved hand raised to release the throat catch of her evening cloak.
`You're home early,' he said, straightening as he turned toward her.
`I'm glad I found you,' she said, advancing into the room. `I've just learned the most astonishing information.'
In spite of himself, Sebastian found himself smiling. `Really? What?'
She swung off her cloak and draped it over the back of a nearby chair. `Hildeyard Tennyson isn't just courting this Miss Goodwin; they're betrothed!'
`I know.'
Hero stared at him, dawning indignation chasing incredulity across her features. `You knew!'
`Tennyson mentioned it when he first arrived back in London. He said the betrothal was arranged shortly before he left for Kent, but was never formally announced due to the sudden death of Miss Goodwin's grandmother in the midst of the settlement negotiations.'
`But if you knew, why didn't you tell me?'
`I thought I did.'
`No. You told me he'd formed an attachment to the daughter of one of his colleagues; you said nothing of a betrothal.'
`I beg your pardon. I suppose I didn't consider it significant. You obviously disagree; why?'
`Think about it. Gabrielle was still in the schoolroom when she took over the management of her father's household after her mother died. She was mistress of the Tennyson town house in the Adelphi and their small estate in Kent for something like thirteen years. Can you imagine a woman like Gabrielle meekly turning over to her brother's new eighteen-year-old bride the reins to two houses she'd considered hers for years, and then continuing to live there in any kind of comfort?'
Sebastian took a slow sip of his brandy. `To be honest, I never gave a thought to the effect his marriage would inevitably have on his domestic arrangements.'
The look on Hero's face said so clearly, Men, that he almost laughed out loud.
He said, `So tell me exactly what all I've missed by being so, well, male about this.'
She jerked off her long gloves and tossed them on the chair beside her cloak. `The thing is, you see, if Gabrielle were penniless, she would have had no option but to continue living at the Adelphi with her brother and his new bride. But Gabrielle wasn't penniless; her father had left her an independent income. It might not have been excessive, but it was enough to enable her to live on her own, or...'
`Or with the man she loved,' said Sebastian.
`And under the circumstances, I can't see his qualms about being seen as a fortune hunter stopping him.' The inclination to laugh was gone.
Hero walked to where she had left the book of English Cavalier poets lying on the table beside the chair. `I was thinking about that poem Arceneaux gave Gabrielle, the one by Robert Herrick. He copied out the last three stanzas to give to her. But it's the first three that I think may be important.' She flipped through the book. `Here it is; listen:
Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be:
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.
A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.
Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,
To honor thy decree...'
Sebastian recited the poem from memory along with her, his gaze locked with hers, their voices blending together, tenor and contralto.
`Or bid it languish quite away, / And 't shall do so for thee.'
`Bloody hell,' he said, and drained his brandy to set the glass aside with a snap.
Chapter 37
Arceneaux's lodgings lay in a dark, narrow lane not far from the church of St. Clements. While not exactly a slum, the once genteel area had long ago begun the slow slide into poverty. As Sebastian paused on the footpath, his gaze scanning the old house's dusty windows and crumbling facade, a bedraggled woman well past her youth, her face gaunt and haunting, separated herself from the shadows of a nearby archway to hiss at him invitingly.
He shook his head and pushed open the street door.
The atmosphere inside the house was hot and close and filled with the smells of cooked cabbage and dry rot and the faint but inescapable odor of uncollected night soil. He climbed the worn, darkened stairs to the attic, trying to imagine Gabrielle's gentle, scholarly French lieutenant in this place. From behind one door came a man's hoarse, angry shouts and a woman's soft weeping; from the next, the wail of a babe went on and on. Someone somewhere was coaxing a sad melody from a violin, the bittersweet notes mingling bizarrely with the yowl of mating cats in the back alley.
There were only two doors at the very top of the stairs. Neither showed any trace of light through their cracks, but Sebastian knocked on both anyway and stood listening for some hint of movement.
Nothing.
Under the terms of his parole, Arceneaux should have been in his lodgings by now. Sebastian turned back toward the stairs, hesitating a moment with one hand on the battered newel post. Then he headed for the Angel on Wych Street.
He found the coffeehouse nearly empty in the heat. Tobacco smoke and the smell of freshly roasted coffee hung heavy in the pale flickering light. As he closed the door quietly behind him, the barman looked up questioningly. Sebastian shook his head, his gaze drifting slowly over the desultory groups of men hunched sullenly around their tables, their conversations low voiced.
Arceneaux was not amongst them. But in a corner near the empty hearth, the big blond hussar captain, Pelletier, was playing chess with a gaunt infantry officer in a tattered blue coat. At Sebastian's approach, the hussar lifted his head, the gold coins at the ends of his love knots winking in the candlelight, the fingers of one hand smoothing his luxurious mustache as he watched Sebastian cross the room toward him.
`Come to ruin another of my games, have you?' he said when Sebastian paused beside the table.
`Has Arceneaux been here tonight?'
The hussar pursed his lips and raised one shoulder in a shrug.
`Does that mean you haven't seen him? Or that you don't know where he is?'
`It means he is not here now.'
`Do you know where I might find him?'
The man's lips parted in an insolent smile. `Non.'
`I thought under the terms of your parole you were confined to your lodgings after eight p.m.'
`Our lodgings are here,' said the infantry officer when the hussar remained silent. `We've rooms upstairs.'
Sebastian glanced down at the chessboard. `Interesting. Whose move?'
`Mine,' said the infantry officer, plucking at his lower lip with one thumb and forefinger, his brow knit in a puzzled, hopeless frown.
`Try queen to F-seven,' said Sebastian, turning away.
`Casse-toi,' hissed the hussar with an angry growl, half rising from his seat.
`Not a wise idea, said Sebastian, turning back with one hand on the flintlock in his pocket.
