Page 93 of Who Cries for the Lost

She’d taken perhaps half a dozen steps toward the stage door when she heard a man’s footsteps coming up behind her fast. Annoyed, she’d half turned when the man’s hand flashed out to close around her arm, his fingers digging deep into the cloth of her spencer. She gasped as he jerked her up against him, and gasped again as something sharp pricked the tender flesh beneath her ribs.

“Don’t,” he said in a quiet, cultured voice, leaning in so close that his breath ruffled a lock of hair at her temple. “Don’t move and don’t scream. I assume a woman with your experience recognizes the point of a dagger when it’s held against her side?”

Kat swallowed hard. His face was unknown to her, but she recognized him instantly by the shape of his head. “What do you want?” she said, calling upon all her training to keep her voice even. “I’ve no money on me, and my jewels are paste.”

She saw his eyes crinkle with what looked like amusement. “Truly, madam, you cut me to the quick. Do I look like a common thief? And here I took such pains to array myself in the guise of a buck on the strut, with no intent beyond imbibing blue ruin and ogling every neatly turned ankle I might chance to spy.”

“What do you want from me?” she said again.

His smile widened. “There is a hackney carriage waiting for us at the corner. We will walk to it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I will kill you here and now.”

“You won’t get away with it.”

“You think not? A dagger slipped between the ribs is silent. You will collapse, and I will be shocked and horrified and call for help. And then in the resulting crush and confusion, I will simply slip away.”

“And if I go with you? Then what? Would you have me believe you won’t still kill me?” Her lip curled. “You think me a fool?”

“No. But you have a choice: You can die here and now, or hope that if you come with me, fate may still fall out in your favor. Which is it to be?”

She was painfully aware of the raucous laughter of the men in the street before the theater, of the breath rasping in and out of her lungs and the pounding of her heart, and of the bite of the killer’s fingers digging into her arm. She could try to scream but had no doubt that he’d kill her the instant she started to draw a deep breath. There was no choice, really. While I breathe, I hope...

Kat clenched her jaw and said, “Which corner?”

Chapter 53

Istill can’t believe Tiptoff is the one who’s doing this,” said Hero as their carriage swung out into Whitehall and began to slowly weave its way through the crowds to Charing Cross. “I mean, Dudley Tiptoff? So he—what? Worked with his uncle Wickham in Switzerland, helping to stir up counterrevolutionary activity in the Vendée and quietly sticking his dagger in anyone the British government wanted eliminated? And then came back to London and set himself up as the epitome of an eccentric, out-of-shape scholar, all the while quietly and efficiently killing people here for the Bourbons?”

“It certainly sounds like it,” said Sebastian. He was silent for a moment, his gaze on the stoic mounted guards on duty outside the Horse Guards. “The problem is, there’s an alternative, seemingly innocent explanation for everything that implicates him. Sedgewick could have told someone else about the role he played in Cabrera. Tiptoff’s brother could have been killed fighting someplace like Vitoria or Talavera. Dilly could have seen him suddenly begin limping simply because his leg started hurting him again. It’s even possible he did hail Sedgewick, but then lied about it simply because he was afraid it might make people suspect him.”

“And lied about the two of them not walking toward the river for the same reason?”

“That one seems more of a stretch,” Sebastian admitted. “What I can’t figure out is what the hell Tiptoff could have said to Sedgewick to make him get into a wherry and go down to the McGuire Tannery when the sun was setting.”

Hero looked thoughtful for a moment. “That part of Southwark might be an abandoned tannery now, but what if there was something there before—something connected to Sedgewick’s interest in witch and werewolf lore? Something Tiptoff could have used to lure Sedgewick there just as the sun was setting?”

Sebastian glanced out the window at the waning daylight, then leaned forward and signaled their coachman to pull up. “The sun is setting now.”

They took a wherry rather than their carriage, both to avoid the increasingly crowded streets and to better replicate the events of that fatal night. The setting sun turned the waters of the Thames a fiery orangey pink that faded slowly to a gleaming silver. The evening was cool and sweet, the day’s earlier rain having cleansed the air and left it smelling faintly of the distant sea. A row of windmills high on the far bank stood out dark against the pink-streaked sky, with the leafy trees of the Temple Gardens shifting gently in the mellow breeze. It was the time of the summer solstice, so even when the sun finally slipped beyond the distant horizon, the sky remained quite light and would for some time.

“Ye know the tannery is closed now, right?” said their wherryman as they glided under Blackfriars Bridge and he began to turn his boat toward the south bank. “I mean, it has been for years.”

“Yes, we know,” said Hero.

The man shrugged, as if there was no understanding the ways of the Quality, then pivoted the boat sharply to send the bow knocking against the rotting boards of the tannery’s dilapidated old wharf. “I can wait fer ye, if ye want,” he said.

“Yes, please,” said Sebastian, helping Hero ashore.

“Me rates go up after dark,” warned the man, squinting toward the sinking sun.

“That won’t be a problem.”

The wherryman nodded and turned his head to shoot a stream of tobacco juice into the choppy waves. “Jist so’s ye know.”

“In my next life,” said Hero as they worked their way along the bank, the soft soles of her delicate lilac shoes slipping and sliding on the wet, slime-covered stones at the river’s edge, “I’m going to come back as a man and wear nice sturdy boots.” Then she thought about it a moment and said, “Although I must admit the thought of wearing nothing but brown, black, and white is rather depressing.”

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