“Let me help you out, shall I? The Russian Czar is pressing the British government for an active alliance that will involve a commitment of troops to help deflect Napoléon’s push toward Moscow. But certain elements within the government—the Earl of Hendon amongst them—are reluctant to divert troops to Russia at a time when they may soon be needed to protect Canada. Nevertheless, despite the lack of a formal treaty of alliance, the Foreign Office has been supplying Russia with copies of the French military dispatches, which regularly make their way out of Paris via a band of smugglers in contact with a certain rare-books collector named Antoine de La Rocque.”
“Ah.” The Russian looked thoughtful. “That I did not know. But it does help explain why he is now dead.”
“As is the Swedish trader Carl Lindquist,” said Sebastian.
“I never knew Mr. Lindquist.”
“Maybe not,” said Sebastian. “But Alexander Ross did.”
“Then perhaps, rather than assaulting diplomats in the street, you should instead consider turning your attention to someone who did have dealings with Alexander Ross, Antoine de La Rocque, and this Carl Lindquist.”
“As in, someone else in the Foreign Office?”
“It seems logical, does it not?”
Sebastian shifted his hold on the Russian Colonel. “The copy of the briefing you were to receive the night of July eighteenth—what happened to it?”
“I’ve no idea. I’m told Sir Hyde searched Alexander’s rooms the next morning, but the briefing was never found. We were given a new copy just a few days ago.”
Sebastian frowned. “Ross’s man, Poole, notified Sir Hyde as soon as he found Ross dead?”
“Yes. It was Sir Hyde who called Dr. Cooper.”
“And subtly suggested to the good doctor that Ross may have suffered from
morbus cordis
?
”
“Perhaps. I wasn’t there.”
Sebastian gave a grim smile. “One last question. When we met at the Queen’s reception, you told me of a quarrel at Vauxhall between Ross and the Turkish Ambassador. You knew of the rumors that Madame Ramadani had seduced someone in the Foreign Office?”
“I had heard whispers, yes.”
“But you didn’t believe them?”
“I didn’t believe it was Alexander. You didn’t know him; I did. He was fiercely loyal, not only to his country but to his friends and to the woman he loved. He would never have played her false.”
“So where did the rumor originate?”
“One might suspect with the man who actually did allow himself to be seduced.”
Sebastian released the Russian and took a step back. “You mean, someone like Sir Hyde Foley?”
Chernishav adjusted his cravat. “I don’t know for certain. But it’s what I suspect, yes.”
With a rising sense of urgency, Sebastian tracked Foley from Downing Street to Carlton House to Whitehall. He was just turning in through the classical screen of the Admiralty when he heard the shrill, ungenteel accents of his tiger raised above the rumble of wagons and carriages in the street.
“Gov’nor!”
Sebastian turned to see Tom darting between a ponderous coal wagon and the high-stepping pair of shiny blacks pulling a phaeton.
“Gov’nor!” The tiger skidded to a halt, breathless. “We got somethin’! The wife o’ the under-keeper what lives in the lodge near the Corner recognized the carriage and dapple grays what come through the entrance to the park this mornin’. She says they belong to a livery stable on the Kentish Town Road. Seems Calhoun’s ma and the livery owner is real thick, and ’e tells Calhoun the rig was let to a cove by the name o’ Sullivan. Todd Sullivan.”
Sebastian frowned. “Sullivan? Who the blazes is he?”
“A weery rum character, according to Calhoun. ’Angs around the Castle Tavern!”
They took her to a wretched one-room stone cottage with a tattered thatch roof somewhere to the northwest of the city.
The cottage lay at the end of a rutted, overgrown lane, its windows broken and stuffed with rags, its yard empty and weed choked.
The coachman—a wizened little old cockney missing one ear—stabled the horses in a dilapidated lean-to, which told Hero they anticipated being here for a while, at least. Then he went to gather wood for a fire while his companions spread the crude table with bread and cheese and salami they washed down with ample swigs from a bottle of gin.
No one offered her either food or drink. But at least they didn’t tie her up. She was left to prowl the cottage’s dark, cramped confines, conscious always of Sullivan’s watchful gaze following her. Marie collapsed in a limp heap beside the grimy hearth, her body wracked with sobs punctuated by an occasional thin, reedy wail.
“There, there,” crooned Hero, going to draw the distraught woman awkwardly into her arms. “Don’t be afraid, Marie. They’re not going to hurt us. You’ll see. Everything will be all right.”
She looked up to find Sullivan smiling at her through narrowed eyes. “Feel sorry for her, do ye?”
“That amuses you for some reason?” said Hero stiffly.
“Aye, it does.” He took another deep swig of gin. “How ye think we knew where ye was going to be, and when ye was going to be there?” He nodded to the woman now sobbing quietly in Hero’s arms. “She told us. Sold ye to us, she did. For a guinea. Just didn’t know she was includin’ herself in the bargain.”
Marie lifted her head to display a pinched, tear-streaked face. “I did what you asked me to do!” she wailed, her pleading gaze fixed on their captor. “Why won’t you let me go? You’ve got
her
.”
But Sullivan only laughed and turned away.
Hero watched him go stand in the open doorway looking out on the sunbaked yard. Then she brought her gaze back to the abigail. “Why, Marie?” she asked, her voice kept low. “Why did you do it?”
The abigail sniffed, her features hardening into what looked very much like hatred. “You think I should have been content with your cast-off gowns and a few paltry trinkets, do you? You fancy that because you pay my wages you also bought my loyalty?”
“Oddly enough, yes,” said Hero, who paid her servants handsomely—for both philosophical and practical reasons.
The abigail’s lip curled with scorn. “You’re a fool.”
“Obviously.” Hero was tempted to add,
But then, under the circumstances, I would venture to suggest that the appellation applies to you, as well
. But she kept the observation to herself.
The abigail had already begun to weep again. And though Hero knew that her tears were driven as much by hatred of Hero as by fear and self-pity, Hero continued to hold the girl and do what she could to comfort her.
As the hours dragged on and the shadows in the yard lengthened, Hero found herself wondering, if Marie asked for her forgiveness, would she have the magnanimity to give it?
But the abigail never did.
They killed Marie just as dusk was beginning to send long shadows across the yard.
Nothing Hero could do would silence the woman’s incessant weeping. In the end, Sullivan simply drew an ugly, curved blade from his boot and walked over to grasp Marie by the hair. Hero saw him yank the woman’s head back and she looked quickly away. But she heard the maid’s rasping gurgle and the soft thump of her body sinking lifeless to the flagstones.
“I take it you don’t feel the need for insurance anymore?” said Hero, forcing herself to meet the tall man’s gaze.
Sullivan wiped his blade on the dead maid’s dress and slid the knife back into its sheath.
Chapter 44
S
ebastian was in no mood for subtleties.
The muzzle of his pistol pressed to the temple of one of Todd Sullivan’s cronies at the Castle Tavern solicited the information that Sullivan frequently made use of a ramshackle cottage on the outskirts of Barham Wood, near Elstree.
In the grip of a cold, driven purposefulness, Sebastian borrowed a bay hack from the nearby livery and entrusted Tom with a message for Bow Street.
“Why can’t I come with you?” asked Tom, his head ducked, his voice strained as he tightened the saddle’s cinch. “It’s because o’ the things I said about Miss Jarvis before, ain’t it? It’s because you don’t trust me no more.”
Painfully conscious of the daylight slipping from the sky, Sebastian paused to rest a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I trust you with my life, and you know it.” He swung into the saddle. “But I could be riding into a trap. I need someone I trust to deliver this message. Now
go
,” he said, and spurred the bay out the livery door.
For Hero, the darkness came all too quickly.
Only a single tallow candle set at one end of the table’s rough boards lit the inside of the cottage. That, and the soft glow from the fire kindled on the hearth by the coachman.
The coachman had long since subsided into a drunken stupor in the fireplace’s inglenook. But the other two men continued to drink steadily. They sprawled now beside the crude table, the remnants of their dinner—more bread and sausage—scattered across the scarred surface. They talked in desultory tones about horses and cockfights and some colleague named Jed who had recently “made a good end” on the hangman’s noose. But all the while, Hero was aware of Sullivan’s dark gaze following her in a way she did not like as she restlessly paced the confines of the cottage.
At one point she heard the buff-coated man lean in close to his friend to whisper, “Need to keep yer breeches’ flap buttoned fer a while yet, lad. Least till we hear they won’t be needin’ her fer some reason.” Both men laughed, and Hero felt a new rush of cold fear wash over her, followed by a hot fury that left a steady resolve in its wake.
“Hey,” Sullivan called to her, raising his voice. “How about ye quit wearin’ out the floor and make yerself useful by fixin’ some more tea?”
Wordlessly, she prepared the cracked, brown earthenware teapot and set in on the boards between the two men. The butcher knife they’d used to slice their bread and salami still lay nearby; she’d noticed the handle of Sullivan’s pistol peeking from the pocket of the coat he’d hung on a peg near the door. She was careful not to glance toward it when she went to tend the water she’d set to heat in a blackened saucepan over the fire.
She was aware of the old coachman snoring softly beside her as she waited for the water to come to a good roiling boil. Then, grasping the handle of the pot with a rag, she carried the heavy pan to the table.
“Who’d have thought,” said Sullivan, smiling up at her, “that a fine lord’s daughter like ye would even know how to boil water?”
“Who’d have thought?” agreed Hero, and dumped the scalding water into his lap.
She was only dimly aware of the hot water splashing up to burn her own flesh through the cloth of her walking dress. Sullivan came roaring up off his chair, both hands clasped to his wet, burning crotch, his face snarled with pain and fury. She could hear the buff-coated man stumbling to his feet behind her. But she was already spinning toward him, the saucepan still gripped in a tight hold. Throwing all her weight behind it, she slammed the hot base of the pot into the side of the second man’s head with a sickening, searing
thud.
He went down.
“
Ye bloody bitch
,” growled Sullivan, lunging for her. She threw the pot at him and snatched the butcher knife off the table. Clenching it in a two-handed grip, she slashed the blade like a sword across his throat.
Hot, bright red blood spurted everywhere. Streams of it. For one awful moment, she could only stand, the knife still clenched in one fist, and stare at him as his step faltered and his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Wot the ’ell?”
Looking up, she saw the coachman stumble to his feet near the hearth. Their gazes met across the room, his jaw slack with horror.
Then they both scrambled for the pistol hanging near the door.
He was closer than she, and he reached Sullivan’s coat first, for she tripped over Sullivan’s body on the way. But the coachman was more than half drunk and he was still trying to pull back the hammer when she buried the butcher knife in his back.
He howled and stumbled sideways, but he didn’t go down. She tried to pull the knife out so that she could stab him again, only she couldn’t seem to yank it free. She heard a scuffle of footsteps behind her and looked around to see the buff-coated man staggering to his feet, the side of his face burnt and blackened from where she’d hit him with the pot.
“I’m gonna make ye wish ye’d never been born,” he spat, charging her.
Giving the old coachman a shove out of the way, she snatched the pistol from his loosening grip, pulled back the hammer, and fired.
Sebastian was galloping down the overgrown lane when he heard the booming report of a pistol. He checked for a moment, a sick fear seizing his gut. Yanking out his own pistol, he spurred the bay forward again.
He clattered into the yard of a tumbledown cottage softly lit by moonlight. The door stood ajar. The familiar, tall figure of a woman leaned against the outer wall of the cottage. She had her head tipped back, her eyes open wide; in one hand, she held a pistol, the barrel pressed against the blood-soaked skirts of her once elegant walking dress. “
Hero
,” he said, sliding off his horse beside her. He realized he was trembling. “My God. Where are you hurt?”
“I’m not,” she said, her voice unbelievably calm and steady. She nodded toward the inside of the cottage. “They’re in there.”
His own pistol held in a tight grip, Sebastian pushed the door open wide.
A gray-haired, liveried coachman lay facedown just to the left of the door, a butcher knife sticking out of his back. Another man, younger, wearing a buff-colored coat, was sprawled on his back halfway between the door and a crude table, a bloody hole blasted in his chest. He was alive, but barely. He breathed his last as Sebastian bent over him. A third man—taller, darker; Sullivan, Sebastian suspected—lay near the table. Someone had slashed his throat so viciously, they’d half cut off his head.