Page 75 of What Cannot Be Said

Finch kept his face turned away. “No. Why would I?”

“It was in May. May of 1799.” Sebastian paused, then said, his voice quiet, “She was your daughter, wasn’t she?”

Finch jerked and started to deny it. Then he stopped, his lips pressing into a thin line as he continued to stare out over the wide, wind-ruffled expanse of the river before them. “It only happened the once, you know. We hadn’t meant for it to happen at all. But we were so young—Laura was only twenty-two, and I was twenty-three. We were young, and desperately in love, and everything seemed... hopeless.” He paused. “My love for Laura was deep and spiritual, infinite and eternal, but it wasn’t passionless. She was trapped in a loveless marriage to a brutal man she’d realized all too quickly she hadn’t really known, while I... I was about to go back to war with the very real possibility that I would be killed. We had a chance—a stolen moment out of time, and we took it. Even though we knew it was wrong, even though we both knew it could never happen again. It’s why we agreed we should never see each other again—to make certain it wouldn’t happen again.”

“Did McInnis know?”

“That Emma wasn’t his?” Finch watched as a wherryman near the far bank stopped rowing and shipped his oars. “I don’t see how he could have known for certain. I mean, he was away, but only for a few weeks. I suppose he might suspect, but that’s all. Even Laura said she didn’t know for certain. But I knew as soon as I saw Emma last summer—she looks exactly like my sister Grace at that age. Only, McInnis never knew Grace.”

He drew a deep breath, his eyes narrowing as he turned his face into the westering sun. “I stayed away from Laura for sixteen years—sixteen long, lonely years. But when by chance I saw her last summer...” He swallowed. “The war was over—or at least we thought it was over. I had survived. We were both older, wiser. Stronger. We thought we could control ourselves. Be friends.” He brought up both hands to cover his face, and it was as if the words were torn from him. “Oh, God. I’ve loved her my entire life. I thought I’d die in that bloody war, but I didn’t. I didn’t! And now I’m here and she... she’s the one who’s dead. And so is Emma.”

Sebastian kept his gaze on the sun-dazzled river. The air was heavy with the briny scent of the inrushing tide, and he could smell the fecund odor of soggy vegetation where the high water lapped against the grass at their feet. After a moment, he said, “When you first came back from Brussels, did you see Laura before the flintlock was taken, or only after?”

Finch raised his head to look at him. “Before. Why?”

“How long before?”

Finch turned away again, a faint suggestion of color riding high on his rugged cheekbones. “I saw her my first day in London; the pistol was taken a few days later.”

“Where did you see her?”

“I knew she usually went for a walk every morning, sometimes in Grosvenor Square, sometimes in Hyde Park. So I went to the park. It was a lucky guess.”

“Was she alone when you saw her?”

“No. She had Thisbe and her young nephew with her, so we spoke for only a moment.”

“Did you tell her where you were staying?”

“I may have? Why?”

But Sebastian only shook his head, unwilling to put his thoughts and suspicions into words.

?Late that night, Sebastian stood beside his bedroom window, his gaze on the silent, lamplit street below. He was aware of Hero sleeping peacefully in the bed behind him and was careful to move quietly, lest he wake her. Lest she somehow read the drift of his thoughts in the horror she must surely glimpse in his eyes.

He didn’t like the implications of what he was learning, didn’t like where his thoughts were leading him. The temptation to ignore the promptings of logic, to tell himself that he must be wrong, was damned near overwhelming. Some things... some things are too revolting, too horrifying, even to consider.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t true.

Chapter 46

Sunday, 30 July

You’re up early,” said Gibson the next morning, a stray lock of gray-threaded dark hair falling into his battered, still-swollen eyes as he looked up from the pallid cadaver laid out on the granite slab before him.

Sebastian paused in the open doorway. “I couldn’t sleep.” The morning air was cold and damp, the light still so pale and gray that Gibson had lit the lantern that hung from a chain over his slab. Its golden glow played over the naked, bloated body of Cato Coldfield, and the smell rising from the days-old corpse was so ripe, Sebastian was careful to breathe through his mouth. “Can you tell me anything yet?”

Gibson set aside his knife and reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “Probably not much you don’t already know. He was shot once, from fairly close.” He tossed aside the rag and pointed to a dark, round, puckered wound in Coldfield’s chest. “That’s what this is, obviously. As you can see, it’s high enough that it wouldn’t have killed him right away, although it probably knocked him over. So then your killer stabbed him.” He pointed to a series of slashing wounds. “Here, and here, and here.”

“Any idea what kind of knife we’re talking about?”

Gibson jerked his chin toward a shelf on the far side of the door, where a blood-encrusted butcher’s knife rested on a chipped enameled plate. “Bow Street sent that over this morning. I’m told they found it in the overgrown garden around the cottage, and it looks right to me.”

Sebastian shifted to get a better look at the knife. It was old and worn and caked with dried blood. But beneath the blood the blade was carefully honed and polished in a way that reminded Sebastian of the diligently tended thatching tools he’d noticed stacked beside the dead man’s cottage. He suspected the knife was Coldfield’s own—probably seized by his panicking killer from the cluttered tabletop when that single pistol shot didn’t prove fatal.

“When?” said Sebastian, bringing his gaze back to the thatcher’s pallid, beard-stubbled face. “When did he die?”

“Could have been early Friday morning, but I suspect Thursday evening or night is more likely.”

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