Page 65 of Who Cries for the Lost

“What did he say about it?”

“Nothing much. He only brought it up because one of the Spanish diplomats involved in the negotiations leading up to sending the prisoners there was recently posted to their embassy here.”

“Which diplomat?”

She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know. If he said the man’s name, I don’t recall it. Why? What has Cabrera to do with any of this?”

“Probably nothing,” said Sebastian. “What about a young man at the Foreign Office named Hamilton Evans? Did Sedgewick ever mention him?”

“No, but I heard he’s been identified as the last body they found. He was so young—just twenty-two.” Her face had taken on a pinched, frightened look. And he wondered if she really believed what she’d said about her husband—that he could never kill someone. Surely she must know that wasn’t true.

“This is all so horrible,” she was saying. “Who is doing it? Do you have any idea at all?”

Sebastian shook his head. “I wish I could say I did, but no, I don’t.”

The truth was, he had lots of ideas, but nothing to confirm any of them. And he felt as if a clock were ticking, that it was only a matter of time until the killer struck again. Because while Sebastian might not know who was doing this, he had no doubt at all that the killer was not yet finished.

Chapter 37

Dressed in an elegant gown of sprigged lightweight silk with a fringed parasol tilted just so against the sun, Kat Boleyn strolled up Piccadilly, pausing occasionally to glance at the window displays of first a haberdasher, then a milliner. She could see the man she had come here to meet standing outside Hatchards, but she took her time approaching him. When she did finally come up to him, she greeted him as an old friend casually encountered, although the meeting had been carefully prearranged. Tall, lean, and powerfully built, with sparkling green eyes and two deceptive dimples, he was Aiden O’Connell, the younger son of Lord Rathkeale of Tyrawley. Fashionable London knew him as a lazy, heedless young man-about-town. Kat Boleyn knew him as Napoléon’s onetime spymaster in London.

He held her hands and gave them a squeeze, an open, careless smile on his face for the benefit of anyone who might be observing them. “Walk with me,” he said, drawing one of her hands through the crook of his arm. “Tell me what’s happening.”

She fell into step beside him as they turned up the street. “You’ve heard about the death of Miles Sedgewick?”

“I have. You think it should concern me?”

Kat kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. “You know what he used to do?”

“For Wellington? Yes. I also know what he was still doing for Bathurst and Castlereagh. Why?”

“He recently brought back from Vienna a list said to contain the names of those here in London known to have passed information to Napoléon. That list disappeared when he was killed.”

He swore softly under his breath. “Where did this list come from?”

“It was probably compiled by Fouché when he was trying to ingratiate his way into favor with the Bourbons, before Napoléon’s escape from Elba. I don’t know why it was given to Sedgewick, nor do I know precisely whose names were on it.” She searched his deceptively open face. “Why? What is it?”

“Two people whose names would in all likelihood be on such a list have disappeared in the last week—one a Frenchwoman, the other an elderly Scotsman.”

Kat’s hands clenched on her parasol, then relaxed to give it a casual twirl that was all for show. “Someone has been watching me. Following me.”

“You don’t know who?”

She shook her head. “No. What can you tell me about the Bourbons’ assassin, Gabriel?”

“I don’t know who he is, if that’s what you’re asking. But whoever he is, he’s very good at what he does.”

Before she could stop herself, Kat shivered.

He drew up and turned to face her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you afraid before.”

“I’ve been afraid before. But not like this.”

He was silent for a moment, his gaze searching her face in a way that made her wonder what he saw there. “Why? Why now and not before?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I’m getting old.”

A crooked smile curled his lips as he reached out to touch the backs of his fingers to her cheek in a gesture that was almost a caress. “You’re not getting old.”

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