Page 43 of Who Cries for the Lost

“No one. I was simply turning over cards.”

She gave a faint shake of her head. “You had a question in your mind. The cards knew, even if you did not.”

Chapter 25

Iwas wonderin’ when ye’d be gettin’ back,” said Tom when Sebastian walked through the slowly awakening streets of St. Giles to where he’d left his tiger with the curricle on Long Acre.

Sebastian leapt up to gather his reins, then glanced back at the boy. “Never tell me you were concerned?”

The tiger pursed his lips and looked away to where a baker’s lad was leaning against the wall of a carriage maker’s, his load of hot buns tilting dangerously as he worked to shorten the strap holding the tray around his neck. “I was jist... wonderin’.”

“Huh,” said Sebastian.

He drove next to Paul Gibson’s surgery on Tower Hill, hoping to learn the results of the final autopsy on the headless, handless corpse dragged from the Thames. But he arrived to find the surgery locked, and his knock on the house’s unlatched front door was met with only silence.

He pushed on the door, the unoiled hinges giving a faint creak as the ancient wooden panels swung inward a few inches, then stopped. “Gibson? Anyone here? Madame Sauvage?”

Silence.

Sebastian pushed the door open wider. “Gibson?”

His own voice echoed back to him.

His hand tightening on his sword stick, he stepped inside, his footsteps light on the stone-flagged passage that led to the back of the old house. At the low doorway to the parlor he stopped, his hand clenching again on his sword stick.

Although it was not cold, a fire had been kindled on the hearth. Dressed only in his breeches and a rumpled shirt that hung open at the neck, Gibson half sat, half lay in one of the worn armchairs beside it, his gray-threaded dark hair plastered to his head with sweat, his chin sunk to his chest as he stared blankly at the flames before him. His face was gaunt and unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his skin a sickly grayish yellow.

“You look like hell,” said Sebastian, pausing in the doorway.

The Irishman looked up, his pupils so tiny as to be nearly nonexistent. “Devlin?” He struggled to push himself up straighter. “Come in. Have a seat. Pour yourself a brandy.” He turned his head, his eyes narrowing as he searched the room. “There must be some around here somewhere.”

Sebastian stayed where he was. “Did you ever finish the autopsy on the headless man?”

Gibson shook his head from side to side, the features of his face slack, his eyes unfocused. “No. But Alexi did.”

“Where is she now?”

“In her garden. She...” He paused to draw a deep, shaky breath. “She doesn’t like it when I get like this.”

So why do you do it? Sebastian wanted to say. He wanted to grab his friend by the shirtfront, haul him up out of his chair, shake him and shout at him and find a way, somehow, to stop him from destroying himself like this. Instead, he turned on his heel and walked out of the house into the windblown morning. The high white clouds were breaking up, allowing fitful gleams of sunshine to chase one another across the dew-glistened beds of roses and honeysuckle and herbs. Alexi Sauvage knelt in a bed of mint near the closed door to the stone outbuilding. She was wearing an old gray gown with a broad-brimmed straw hat tied under her chin by a fading blue ribbon to keep the wind from taking it off, and had her hands deep in the dirt, pulling weeds. She looked up when he paused on the stoop, then settled back on her heels, one hand coming up to shove a stray lock of hair from her eyes with the back of her curled wrist.

“You saw him?” she said as he came up to her.

He was aware of the anger and frustration thrumming through him, along with a sense of helplessness that he didn’t quite know how to handle. “You told me once that there’s something you can do that might rid him of his phantom pains so that he can get off that bloody opium. Why haven’t you done it?”

“Why?” Her hand flashed toward the house in a quick, angry gesture. “Why don’t you ask him why he refuses to let me even try to help him?”

Sebastian looked away, toward the high wall at the base of the yard and the simple stone grotto she had erected for the bones she was collecting from this ground. He blew out a long, painful breath. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

He saw a glitter of what might have been unshed tears in her eyes. But she simply nodded, swallowed hard, and went back to her weeding.

He said, “Gibson tells me you finished the autopsy on the headless man.”

She kept her attention on her task. “I did, yes.”

“Did you find anything? Anything at all that might help identify him?”

“Not really. He was a Caucasian male much closer to forty than fifty. At one time he’d led a more active life, but of late his days had been filled with little physical exertion beyond enjoying his dinner and a good bottle of brandy. But we already knew that, didn’t we?”

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