Page 46 of Who Cries for the Lost

Sebastian forced himself to look again at the headless corpse before them. Lovejoy was right; this man was obviously much younger than the previous headless corpse. Younger and leaner, his wet linen shirt clinging to the clearly defined muscles of his arms and chest. But it was the exquisite cut of his trousers that caught Sebastian’s attention.

“We may be in luck,” he said, hunkering down beside the dead man. “Whatever Bond Street tailor made these pantaloons will surely recognize his own work.”

Lovejoy straightened, his troubled gaze meeting Sebastian’s. “So why did the killer leave them?”

“Perhaps he wants us to know who this one is?”

“Then why take the head and feet?”

But Sebastian could only shake his head, the silence filling with the slap of the river against the wharf’s pilings and the plaintive cries of the seagulls wheeling overhead.

Chapter 27

That morning, Kat Boleyn wandered the flower and live plant section of Covent Garden Market. The day was still cool and vaguely misty, the piazza a raucous, colorful swirl of brawling stall keepers and haggling buyers; of rumbling cartwheels and barking dogs and running, shouting children. She paused for a moment, breathing in the sweet scents of honeysuckle and jasmine and remembering another time, another place.

She’d been born in a small white cottage on the edge of an Irish green, to a beautiful, laughing, loving woman who’d died a hideous death at the hands of a troop of British soldiers. The sights and sounds of that misty morning—the fear and rage and gritty determination that had surged through her as she listened to the British soldiers’ laughter while her mother and stepfather slowly died—would always be a part of Kat. It had helped form her into the woman she was now.

It’s all right to be afraid, her stepfather used to tell her. Sometimes fear is sensible. But you can’t let fear control your life or stop you from doing the things you were meant to do. She’d sworn to live her life that way. But now her fear wasn’t stopping her; it was haunting her. She was being watched, and she was being followed.

Even before Devlin’s warning, she’d been uneasy, although she couldn’t have articulated why. But she now understood that what she had somehow sensed was a malevolence focused intently upon her. She’d never seen the man well enough to recognize him; only a shadow in the night, a nondescript, half-hidden face in the crowd that was quickly glimpsed and then gone. But he was out there and he meant to kill her. Of that she was certain.

It had been her intent this morning to contact a dashing, laughing young Irishman named Aiden O’Connell, who was something quite different from the careless, heedless younger son of an earl that most thought him. But she knew now that she was going to need to be very, very careful, lest in her attempt to warn him she inadvertently betray him instead.

Chapter 28

Sebastian spent much of the afternoon visiting the haunts frequented by gentlemen of means: the exclusive clubs of St. James’s Street; Tattersall’s and Cribb’s Parlor; Manton’s Shooting Gallery and Angelo’s. But he finally came upon the man he was seeking walking across the forecourt of the British Museum.

“Devlin!” said Monty, his face breaking into a broad smile when he caught sight of Sebastian coming toward him. Then the smile faded. “Did you hear they’ve pulled another headless body from the Thames?”

“I did, yes.”

McPherson gave an exaggerated grimace. “It’s bloody ugly, that’s what this is. What the devil do you think is going on?”

“I wish I knew.” Sebastian threw a quick glance at a group of white-haired, stoop-shouldered scholars standing nearby, deep in conversation. “Walk with me a ways?”

“Of course.”

The two men turned toward the portico to Great Russell Street. By now the wind had blown all but a few stray wisps of fluffy white clouds from the sky, leaving it a pale, muted blue.

“So who is this new dead man?” said McPherson. “Does anyone know?”

“Not yet.”

“Bloody hell,” said the Scotsman on a harsh exhalation of breath. “I suppose when you think about it, it’s a miracle Sedgewick was identified.”

“It is,” said Sebastian as they turned up the street. “I’ve discovered where he went when he was on the Continent, by the way.”

McPherson glanced over at him. “Where?”

“Vienna.”

McPherson sucked his lower lip between his teeth, his features looking oddly drawn. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Neither do I. From what I gather, he was on a mission for either the Foreign Office or Bathurst. But I’m hearing he also brought back a list of people in London thought to have sent sensitive information to Napoléon in the past. Have you heard about that?”

“Good God, no. Are you serious?”

“You don’t know anything about it?” said Sebastian. Your friend tells your wife about it, but not you? And then your wife tells Hero about it, but not you?

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