Page 59 of Who Cries for the Lost

“Gibson? No. But I’m not so sure about Alexi. I’d say she’s more than capable of killing—has done so, in fact, in the past.”

“That was war.”

He turned from the window. “We always make such a fine distinction, don’t we? A man kills his nation’s enemy in battle and it’s a brave, noble, heroic deed. But if that same man were to kill the same Frenchman—or Italian or Russian—in a time of peace, we’d call it murder.”

“Because then his motives would be selfish.”

“His personal motives. But if the motives of his nation—or at least of his government or king—are selfish, it’s all right?”

She tilted her head, her gaze hard on his face. “What if the man who dumped Sedgewick and the others in the Thames thought he was doing a noble, selfless deed? According to Dudley Tiptoff, would such a man still be evil?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask him.”

She reached to touch her fingertips to his temple, where he could feel that band of pressure squeezing tighter and tighter. “Your head hurts, doesn’t it?”

He caught her hand in his and brought her fingers to his lips. “How did you know?”

“I know.”

He found Alexi Sauvage in the surgery on Tower Hill. She was seated at a small round table in the front room, winding bandages, and looked over at him when he pushed open the front door.

“Gibson told me you were looking for me,” she said, going back to what she’d been doing.

He braced one hand against the frame of the entrance to the room and leaned into it. “You lied to me. You told me you hadn’t seen Sedgewick in years. Except now I discover you had a public quarrel with him the very night he was killed—in Charing Cross, of all bloody places. Did you really think I wouldn’t hear about it?”

She went quite still, her hands resting in her lap, her face half turned away. But she didn’t say anything.

“What time was it?” he said.

“When I saw him? Half past eight, perhaps. Maybe nine.”

“Why Charing Cross?”

She gave a faint twitch of one shoulder. “I saw him there by chance. I’d been... visiting someone with a sick child and was heading home when I looked up to see him in a hackney snarled in traffic.”

“And so you—what? Decided to accost him for old times’ sake?”

Her nostrils flared on a quick, angry breath. “Something like that.”

“And then what?”

“And then... nothing. He had descended from the hackney in the course of our conversation, and then he continued on his way, on foot. The last time I saw him, he was headed down Whitehall.”

“When you first saw him, what direction had he been coming from?”

“Someplace in the east.”

Except for the slight difference in timing, it fit with what Sebastian had learned from Tiptoff. But he had a feeling the rest of what she was telling him was pure garbage.

With a swallowed oath, he pushed against the doorframe and turned away, only to swing back and face her again, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. “You’re in danger; you do realize that, don’t you? The Marquis of Stamford is pushing Bow Street to have you taken up for murdering his brother at exactly the same time as the Palace is pressuring them to arrest someone—anyone—to calm the public’s fear that we’re all about to be chopped into bits and thrown into the Thames. Add in the fact that you’re not just a foreigner, you’re French, at a time when we are probably already fighting what many see as an apocalyptic battle against the French, and I’d say your chances of ever coming out of prison alive are not good.”

She stared at him, her face now white, her nostrils pinched. “I wouldn’t have thought you cared.”

“God damn it! You’re putting Gibson at risk, too. You know that! If you get taken up, he probably will be, too—as your accomplice.”

A faint, ironic smile tugged at her lips. “Well, at least you’re honest about why you care. It has nothing to do with me at all.”

Sebastian took a deep breath, then let it out. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. But even if you don’t care what happens to you, I’d think you would at least care about him.”

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