Page 57 of Who Cries for the Lost

Sebastian felt the warm night air gust damp against his face. “You’re saying an incident that occurred two or three years ago must be relevant, whereas something from seven years ago is not?”

“Who said anything about two or three years ago? I’m hearing the bitch went after Miles the very night he was killed, in the middle of Charing Cross.”

Sebastian was aware of a burst of laughter from an open window above them. According to Alexi, she hadn’t seen her bigamous husband in years. “And where precisely are you ‘hearing’ this?”

“I’ve now had two different people tell me the tale.”

“And did either of them happen to mention the subject of this quarrel?”

“One assumes it was more of the same mad nonsense she’s been spouting for years.”

Sebastian frowned. “You say this was in Charing Cross? At what time?”

“Sometime that evening. Why don’t you try asking her?” Stamford drew back his shoulders, his chin held high as he ostentatiously readjusted the set of his coat. “And that’s all I have to say to you. But mark my words, if I ever hear my wife’s name on your lips again, I will call you out.”

Sebastian let the man go. If Stamford was telling the truth—if his quarrel with Miles had in fact been over the younger man’s debts, and if Lady Stamford had indeed died of some unsuspected heart disorder just months later—then the Marquis’s anger was well justified.

Except that seven years ago, Miles had been a man of twenty-four, not a callow youth freshly down from Oxford. He’d also been recently married to Edward Platt’s daughter, which meant that at that point he presumably still had money to burn. And then there was the matter of the Marquis’s behavior after his wife’s sudden, inexplicable death. A postmortem could have put to rest all the ugly speculations of foul play once and for all, yet Stamford had refused to allow one. And while families did sometimes balk at the procedure, Stamford’s only objection to such an examination of his brother’s remains had concerned the origins and social class of the surgeon involved, not the procedure itself.

For a moment Sebastian stood where he was, watching the Marquis stride angrily back up the hill. Then he turned to stare out over the dark, shadowy parkland beyond the palace.

Even if the rumors surrounding the events of seven years ago were true, they still didn’t explain why a man who’d nursed a grudge against his brother for all those years would suddenly decide to murder him, blow off his face, and castrate him. It made no sense, unless...

Unless the handsome younger brother had set his sights on the Marquis’s young, pretty second wife.

Of course, that wouldn’t explain the two headless corpses that had also been pulled from the Thames. But while it was true that all three men had been murdered, mutilated, and dumped in the river, their bodies had not all been treated exactly the same.

Did that matter? It might.

And while Sebastian didn’t want to believe that he was dealing with two different killers, he also knew that it was a possibility he couldn’t entirely dismiss.

Sebastian found Paul Gibson’s surgery and the ancient stone house beside it dark and locked.

“If’n yer lookin’ fer the surgeon,” said a passing young lad as Sebastian was turning back toward his curricle, “I seen him just a few minutes ago down by the Tower.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian.

The moon was nearly full, bathing the ancient stones of the looming fortress in a pale silvery light. Sebastian walked downhill along the banks of the old moat to where he could see a man’s familiar thin figure standing near Tower Dock, his back to the massive medieval castle as he stared out across the wide moonlit expanse of the Thames. Gibson acknowledged Sebastian’s approach with a nod, his gaze going back again to the south.

“Do you think it’s started yet?” he said.

There was no need to ask of what he spoke. “Yes,” said Sebastian, stopping beside him.

“I wish I were there.”

“So do I.”

Gibson glanced over at him. “But you chose to sell out.”

Sebastian kept his gaze on a wherryman working his way across the choppy expanse of water. “I did. Because I didn’t believe in what I was doing anymore, and because I didn’t like what it was doing to me.” He watched the wherryman ship his oars. “I still don’t believe in what Britain is trying to do—putting the Bourbons and the rest of that spoiled repressive lot back on their thrones. But you and I both know that’s not what’s driving the poor bastards who’re fighting and dying over there right now. They’re fighting for each other... which I guess is why I feel like I should be there with them, too.”

Gibson nodded, and the two friends stood in silence for a time, the wind off the river buffeting them with the scents of the sea and faraway places. Then Gibson said, “I was going to send you a note in the morning, about this new headless, footless corpse.”

“You’ve finished the autopsy?”

“I have. Although if you’re looking for answers to what happened to the poor bastard, I can’t tell you. He wasn’t stabbed—at least not in the parts we have. And while there are one or two things that make me suspect he was strangled, I can’t say for certain. Your killer whacked the head off too close to the trunk.”

“So what can you tell me about the man himself?”

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