Chapter 11

Sebastian spent what was left of the night in a small chamber above the Black Hart's rear court. After one glance at the bed, he took off his boots, spread his greatcoat on a narrow wooden bench, and lay down upon it. He'd known worse, in the war: watchful nights spent on a cold, stony ground or listening to the scuttling of cockroaches across a dirt floor.

He did not sleep.

When dawn came, he rose from his makeshift bed and crossed to the window overlooking the rubbish-strewn yard below. The morning was raw and bitter cold, but he swung the casement open wide and drew the acrid air deep into his lungs, his thoughts on the events of the evening before.

It had always seemed to Sebastian that such moments came in every man's life; pivotal instants when a chance occurrence or seemingly trifling decision could wrench a man away from what had appeared to be an inevitable future and send him hurtling in a different direction entirely. Yet it was difficult now to determine precisely when that moment in Sebastian's life had come. With his own flash of quick anger and the constable's misstep? Or had it come before that, the night before, with a promise given to a frantic, fearful woman?

Sebastian pursed his lips and blew out a long sigh. Despite everything that had happened, he couldn't regret that promise, nor could he betray the woman to whom it had been made.

Drawing a small notebook from his pocket, he tore out a sheet of paper and scrawled quickly, Please give Melanie my assurances I shan't betray her. No matter what happens, she mustn't say anything to give herself away. Her life depends upon it. D. Folding the page once, twice, he wrote the name and address of Melanie's sister on the outside, then thrust the note deep into a pocket.

He had calmly considered, during the long night, the options now open to him and decided these came down to three. He could surrender himself to Sir Henry Lovejoy at Queen Square and place his faith in a system better known for delivering summary judgments than for ferreting out the truth. He could flee abroad, hoping someone might clear his name in his absence but resigning himself to a life in exile if that failed to happen.

Or he could lose himself in the shadows of the city and set to work discovering, on his own, who had killed Rachel York.

She'd been an unusually attractive woman, Rachel. He'd seen her often at the city's various theaters—both on stage and at those select gatherings attended exclusively by such women and the wealthy, highborn men they sought to attract. He'd seen her and, he had to admit, admired her. But he'd never taken her as his mistress, never even sampled what she had, on several occasions, made more than obvious she was willing to give.

He couldn't begin to fathom why or how he had come to be named as her murderer. Yet he could place no reliance on the authorities bothering to discover the truth behind what had happened. When a city's detectives were paid a forty-pound reward for each conviction, true justice was more often than not a victim of avarice.

And so at some point during the long night Sebastian had decided that he would not escape abroad, nor would he surrender himself, trustingly, foolishly, to the dubious expedience of British justice. Out there, somewhere, was the man who had killed Rachel York; Sebastian's only hope lay in discovering precisely who that killer was.

Five years in army intelligence had taught Sebastian that the first thing he needed was information. He needed to talk to someone who'd known Rachel; someone who could identify her enemies, someone who might know why she had gone on a cold winter's night, alone, to meet her death in a small, out-of-the-way Westminster church.

He'd already decided against making any attempt to contact either his own family or friends; they would undoubtedly be watched, and he would do nothing that might endanger them. But no one would think to set a watch upon the actress who'd been playing Rosalind to Rachel's Celia in the Covent Garden production of As You Like It . The woman who'd broken Sebastian's heart six long years ago....

The sun was rising higher in the sky, but only a faint hint of lightness showed through the inevitable mantle of dirty fog. He could hear the rumble of wagons and market carts on their way to Covent Garden, and the whirl of a knife grinder's wheel in the yard below.

And, nearer at hand, the sound of quick footsteps in the corridor outside his room.

Flattening himself against the wall beside the door, Sebastian stood tense, waiting. Then he heard a furtive scratching and a boy's whisper. "Oi, gov'nor. 'Tis me, Tom."

It was the urchin from last night. "Tom?" said Sebastian with malicious amusement. "I don't believe I'm acquainted with a Tom."

From the far side of the panel came an impatient oath. "The figger what tried to prig your purse last night."

"Ah. And you expect me to open the door to you, do you, my larcenous friend?"

"Lord love you, gov'nor. Now's no time to be funnin'. There's Bow Street men downstairs right this weery minute. Asking for you, they are—leastways, if'n you're the cove what knifed a constable over Mayfair way and—"

Sebastian opened the door so fast that Tom, who'd been leaning against it, half fell into the room. In the pale light, the boy looked thinner, and dirtier, than Sebastian remembered him. He fixed Sebastian with dark, assessing eyes. "They also say you cut up some mort in a church off Great Peter Street." There was a pause. "Did you?"

Sebastian met the boy's hard gaze. "No."

Tom nodded his head in quick, silent affirmation. "Thought I smelled a rum 'un. But there's two beaks in the common room right this weery minute, askin' about you, and another forty-pounder out the front."

Perching on the edge of the bench, Sebastian pulled on first one boot, then the other. "I take it you're suggesting I might find it advisable to depart through the window?"

"Aye, gov'nor. And pretty soon, too, if'n you're not anxious to dance the Newgate hornpipe."

Sweeping up his greatcoat, Sebastian crossed to the open window and surveyed the yard below. The casement opened above a low, lean-to roof of what he thought might be the kitchen. But the only exit from the yard was through the front arch. He would have to make his way along the slant of the lean-to roof to where it abutted a jutting brick extension of the inn's second story, and somehow climb from there up onto the main roof.

"Why, precisely, did you come to warn me?" Sebastian asked, pausing with one leg over the windowsill to look back at the boy.

"Gor. If ever a cove needed help, it's you, gov'nor."

"Huh. Your altruism, while inspiring, is somehow less than convincing," Sebastian said, and dropped to the sloping roof below.

Light and agile as a cat, Tom landed beside him. "I don't know what you means by that, exactly. But my offer still stands: for a shilling a day, I'm your man. I know these parts weery well, I do. If'n you're set on 'idin' out around 'ere, you couldn't find a better snapper."

"I thought the price was ten pence?" Sebastian said, running along the lean-to roof in a low crouch.

"It was. Only, now that I know the China Street pigs is after you, the price 'as gone up."

Sebastian laughed—just as a shout went up from the yard below.