and quivering with her agitated breathing.
`Where the bloody hell is he?' Sebastian said again.
`You do favor the dramatic entrance, don't you?' said a sardonic voice from a doorway that opened off the back of the room.
Sebastian turned. His gaze met Knox's across the now empty expanse of the public room, twin pairs of yellow eyes that shared an ability to see great distances and at night with an accuracy that struck most normal men as inhuman.
Or evil.
Sebastian laid the Baker on the scarred surface of the bar with a clatter. `I'm returning your rifle.'
A faint smile curled the other man's lips. `Sorry. Not mine. Did someone lose it?'
`Where were you an hour ago?'
Jamie Knox advanced into the room, still faintly smiling. He wore his usual black coat and black waistcoat and black cravat, his face a dark, handsome mask. `Here, of course. Why do you ask?'
`Ever meet a Frenchman named Philippe Arceneaux?'
`Arceneaux?' Knox frowned as if with the effort of concentration. `Perhaps. It's rather difficult to say. I own a tavern; many men come here.'
`Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux.'
`Does he say I know him?'
`He's dead. Someone shot him through the heart tonight from a distance of some three hundred yards. Know anyone who could make a shot like that?'
`It's a rare talent. But not unheard of.'
`Your friend tells me you can shoot the head off a running rabbit at more than three hundred yards. In the dark.'
Knox glanced over to where the wide-eyed girl still stood behind the bar. `Leave us.'
She let herself out the front door, pausing on the threshold to throw him a last, questioning glance that he ignored. The public room was now empty except for the two men.
Knox sauntered behind the bar and reached below the counter for a bottle of brandy. `You've obviously been talking to my old mate, Jack Simpson.' He eased the stopper from the brandy.
`He'll also tell you that I can catch a will-o-the-wisp out of the air and hear the whispers of the dead. But just between you and me, I wouldn't be believing everything he says.'
Sebastian wandered the room, his gaze drifting over the low-beamed rafters, the massive old stone fireplace, and broad hearth. `I've heard it said you won this place at the roll of the dice or that you killed a man for it. Which was it?'
Knox set the bottle and two glasses on the counter beside the Baker. `Like I said, you don't want to be believing everything you hear about me.'
`I also hear you were at Corunna. Lieutenant Arceneaux was at Corunna, as well. Is that where you met him?'
`I never met your Lieutenant Arceneaux, God rest his soul.' Knox poured brandy into the two glasses and tucked the bottle away. `Here. Have a drink.'
`Thank you, but no.'
Knox laughed. `What do you think, then? That I'm trying to do away with you?' He pushed both glasses across the bar. `There. You choose one; I'll drink the other. Will that allay your superstitions?'
Moving deliberately, Sebastian came to select one of the glasses of amber liquid.
His yellow eyes gleaming, Knox lifted the other to his lips and drank deeply. `There. Now, shall we wait to see if I drop to the floor and start thrashing about in my death throes?' He took another sip, this time letting the brandy roll around on his tongue. `It's good stuff, this. Comes from a château just outside Angoulème.'
`And how did it make its way into your cellars?'
Knox smiled. `Would you have me believe you've no French brandy in your cellars, then?'
`Arceneaux hailed from Saint-Malo, another wine region. He told me once his father owned a vineyard. Perhaps that's how you met him.'
Knox was no longer smiling. `I told you. I never met him.'
`I'll figure it out eventually, you know.'
`When you do, come back. But as it is, you've nothing against me but conjecture.'
`So sure?'
`If you had anything you thought might begin to pass as proof, I'd be down at Bow Street right now, talking to the magistrates. Not to you.'
`Thanks for the brandy.' Sebastian set his glass on the bar and turned toward the street.
`You're forgetting your rifle,' Knox called after him.
`Keep it. You might need it again.'
The tavern owner laughed, his voice ringing out loud and clear.
`You remember how I told you my father was a cavalry officer?'
Sebastian paused with one hand on the doorjamb to look back at him.
Knox still stood behind the bar. `Well, I lied. My mother never knew for certain which of the three bastards she lay with had planted me in her belly. She was a young barmaid named Nellie, you see, at the Crown and Thorn, in Ludlow. According to the woman who raised me, Nellie said her baby's da could've been either an English lord, a Welsh captain, or a Gypsy stableboy. If she'd lived long enough, she might have recognized my actual sire in me as I grew. But she died when I was still only a wee babe.'
Sebastian's skin felt hot; the abrasions on his face stung. And yet he knew the strangest sensation, as if he were somehow apart from himself, a disinterested observer of what was being said.
Knox said, `I saw the Earl of Hendon in Grosvenor Square the other day. He looks nothing like me. But then, it occurs to me, he don't look anything like you, either. Now, does he?'
Sebastian opened the door and walked out into the warm, wind-tossed night.
Chapter 40
The storm broke shortly before dawn, with great sheets of rain hurled through the streets by a howling wind and thunder that rattled the glass in the windowpanes with all the savage power of an artillery barrage.
Sebastian stood on the terrace at the rear of his Brook Street house, his outstretched arms braced against the stone balustrade overlooking the garden. He had his eyes closed, his head tipped back as he let the rain wash over him.
When he was a very little boy, his mother used to take him for walks in the rain. Sometimes in the summer, if it was warm, she'd let him out without his cap. The rain would plaster his hair to his head and run off the tip of his nose. He'd try to catch the drops with his tongue, and she wouldn't scold him, not even when he waded and splashed through every puddle he could find, squealing as the water shot out from beneath his stomping feet.
But his favorite walks were those they took in the rain in Cornwall, when the fierce winds of a storm would lash the coast and she'd bundle him up and take him with her out to the cliffs. Together they would stand side by side, mesmerized by the power of the wind and the fury of the waves battering the rocks with an awe-inspiring roar. She'd shout, `Oh, Sebastian; feel that! Isn't it glorious?' And the wind would slam into her, rocking her back a step, and she'd laugh and fling wide her arms and close her eyes, surrendering to the sheer exhilaration of the moment.
So lost was he in the past that he failed to mark the opening of the door behind him. It was some other sense entirely that brought him the sudden certainty that he was no longer alone.
`Devlin?'
He turned to find Hero standing in the doorway. She still wore the ivory gown with the dusky pink ribbons, and he wondered if she had awakened and dressed to come in search of him, or if she had not yet made it to her bed.
