Page 9 of Who Cries for the Lost

“Men have been known to go through a bigamous marriage ceremony in order to trick a woman into doing what they want her to do,” said Hero, meeting the Marquis’s angry gaze with a tight, faintly contemptuous smile.

The Marquis stiffened. “I’ll remind you, madam, that you are speaking of my brother!”

“And I’ll remind you that you are speaking to my wife,” snapped Sebastian. “If you’ve seen the body, then you know that whoever killed Miles also mutilated his face and castrated him. Can you think of anyone angry enough with him to do something like that?”

“Good God, no!”

“He hadn’t quarreled with anyone recently?”

“No.”

Sebastian watched the older man’s eyes shift away and knew it for a lie. “Your brother and I served together in the Peninsula. He was far from faithful to his wife then, yet you would have me believe he was faithful to her now?”

The Marquis’s face had taken on a deep, almost purplish hue. “Enough of this. You stay out of my family’s affairs, do you hear?” He raised one hand to point a shaky finger at Sebastian. “You let the authorities handle it, and you keep your ugly insinuations about my brother to yourself.” He turned to Hero and gave her a swift, jerky nod. “Your pardon for the interruption, Lady Devlin. Good day.”

And then he swept from the room.

“Well,” said Hero as they listened to Morey close the door behind their departing visitor with a decided snap. “What a rude, unpleasant man. For a moment there I thought you were going to plant him a facer.”

Sebastian took a slow sip of the brandy he suddenly realized he was still holding. “I was tempted, but I wanted to hear what the bastard had to say. For a man who just lost his dearly beloved younger brother, he strikes me as far more angry than grief-stricken. What do you think?”

Hero reached out to take another sip of his brandy. “He does, yes. But in my experience, anger is one of the few emotions most men are comfortable with. So when they feel frustration or anxiety or even grief, it all simply gets translated into anger.”

“Oh, really?” said Sebastian.

Hero’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Yes, really.” Her smile faded. “Somehow I don’t think you’re going to be able to get anything useful out of him.”

“Somehow I suspect you’re right. I might have more success with Miles’s wife if she’d agree to see me. But given that she’s in mourning, I doubt that will be possible.”

“There’s a chance that she might agree to receive me,” Hero said thoughtfully. “Not today, surely, but perhaps tomorrow. I wouldn’t say I know her well, but we’ve met each other often enough over the last nine or ten years. And she’s one of those women one might politely describe as ‘socially ambitious.’ ”

“I wonder if she’s come to regret her marriage to a mere younger son.”

“I’ve no idea. I do know she’s become quite religious of late. And I don’t mean in a quiet, devout way, but in that smug, ostentatious, self-righteous fashion that so often teeters dangerously close to fanaticism.”

“Interesting. I’m surprised she fell for a man like Sedgewick.”

“Well, he was a very handsome man, and he could be charming. When she first came out it was expected that she would do quite well; she was pretty enough in a pale, unassuming way, and her dowry was impressive. She might not come from what your aunt Henrietta would call a ‘good family,’ but what the Platts lack in terms of ancient lineage they more than make up for in good, hard, filthy lucre. So when she married Sedgewick, no one could understand why her father let her ‘throw herself away’ on an untitled younger son—until she presented her new husband with an eight-pound pledge of her affection just six months after the wedding, at which point it all became clear.”

“Imagine that,” said Sebastian, smiling as he reached out to take her hand.

She shared his smile. “Shocking, isn’t it?” Then she was silent for a moment, her thoughts obviously troubled. “I wonder if she knows. About Alexi, I mean.”

“Probably not. Although after eight years of marriage, I’d be surprised if she doesn’t have at least some idea of the manner of man she married.”

Hero glanced toward the window overlooking the street. “You think Stamford told Bow Street about Alexi?”

“You know he did,” said Sebastian, and drained his glass.

Chapter 6

London’s police system was a never-ending source of puzzlement to visitors to the city from the Continent, mainly because there was no police system. The Thames Police patrolled the river, but they had no jurisdiction beyond it. The rest of the metropolitan area still hobbled along with an archaic patchwork of medieval vestries, unpaid and often corrupt county magistrates, and aged, underpaid constables and night watchmen, all combined haphazardly with a handful of underfunded and understaffed “public offices” that had been established by the Home Department less than twenty-five years before.

At the apex of this chaotic jumble stood—sort of—the Public Office of Bow Street, which was both the oldest of them all and the model for those established after it. Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates and the famous Bow Street Runners they controlled had the authority to operate not only throughout the metropolitan area but throughout the land as well. Yet their small size—and the fact that the Home Office liked them to focus on things like social disorder and threats to national security—meant that they generally became involved only in London’s most high-profile cases.

The mutilation and murder of a powerful marquis’s brother qualified.

“I fear Lord Stamford is a man unaccustomed to taking no for an answer,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy when Sebastian stopped by his small book-lined Bow Street office later that day.

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