Page 79 of What Cannot Be Said

He couldn’t have said what he’d been expecting to find at Chester House. Evidence of a hidden dark side to Laura McInnis’s seemingly grief-stricken brother, perhaps? Confirmation that Georgina Priestly had been well and truly mad when locked away forever behind the grim walls of a private lunatic asylum?

But the reality of what he’d just heard and witnessed was considerably more horrifying than anything he might have imagined. And he couldn’t help but wonder, Was Georgina truly insane when she struck out in fury and killed her abigail? Much as he wanted to believe it, he was no longer certain. Unstable, perhaps, but mad? How did one define madness? Where was the dividing line between what we liked to think of as sanity and the beginnings of lunacy? Was there even a line? How easy was it to slip over that indistinct, perhaps even arbitrary border? He thought about Dr.Samuel Palmer, a well-respected, widely admired physician who spent his days routinely torturing the helpless men and women consigned to his care. How could anyone define him as sane?

It was an unpleasant and ultimately unproductive line of thought, and Sebastian tried to push it away. He was aware of the warmth of the sun on his face, of the rhythmic action of the chestnuts’ powerful hindquarters as they left the open fields behind to pass now between rows of workshops, all shuttered for the Sabbath.

He couldn’t have said what warned him. A flicker of movement caught out of the corner of his eye? The twitching of the near gelding’s ear? But he was already reining in when a familiar-looking big man on a dapple gray burst from behind the end wall of a cooperage to plow his horse straight into the chestnuts.

Swearing, Sebastian hauled on the reins as the plunging, squealing horses slewed the curricle sideways across the road. He almost had them under control when a second rider in a green coat spurred his horse from behind a nearby blacksmith’s shop.

“You were warned,” said the man in the green coat, calmly extending his arm to level a flintlock pistol at Sebastian’s head and ease back the hammer.

Chapter 48

Run, Tom!” shouted Sebastian, his whip cracking as he sent the thong flashing out to cut deeply across Green Coat’s upper face and eyes.

The man screamed, the pistol discharging into the air as his horse reared up, throwing him.

“You bastard,” swore the man on the dapple gray, reaching awkwardly to jerk a flintlock from his waistband.

Rising up, Sebastian threw himself at the man, knocking him from the saddle. They went down together, the big oaf hitting the ground first, with Sebastian on top of him. The man’s pistol went flying, the impact driving the breath from his chest with a painful oooff that left him gasping for air.

Rolling away from him, Sebastian snatched up the fallen pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and pivoted to shoot Green Coat in the chest as the man picked himself up from nearby and charged, blood streaming from the cut across his face.

The green-coated man spun around, took one step, and collapsed.

“Lieutenant!” shouted the man from the dapple gray, his face twisting into a snarl as he lumbered to his feet, fists clenched. Sebastian dropped the spent pistol, yanked his dagger from the sheath in his boot, and sent it whistling through the air.

The blade hit the man in the throat and sank deep.

For a moment he wavered, his eyes widening, his features going slack with shock. He sank to his knees, reaching out with one splayed hand that fluttered back to his side as he flopped forward onto his face and lay still.

“Gor,” whispered Tom from where he stood holding the reins of the nervous, snorting chestnuts above their bits and making soft, soothing noises. “Are they dead?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Sebastian, breathing heavily as he pushed to his feet. “But I told you to run, damn it.”

“I couldn’t leave the horses, gov’nor!”

Sebastian grunted and went to turn over the big man. He flopped onto his back, his mouth open, his eyes empty.

Swiping one crooked forearm across his sweat-dampened face, Sebastian went to crouch down beside the green-coated man. The bullet had caught him high in the chest. He wasn’t dead yet, but he soon would be.

“Who sent you?” said Sebastian, slipping an arm beneath the man’s head so he wouldn’t choke on his own blood.

The man reached up to grab Sebastian’s coat, the hand spasming with pain.

“Tell me,” said Sebastian. “For God’s sake, why protect him now?”

The man looked up at him with pain-filled, anguished eyes. Sebastian saw a tear form in the corner of one eye to roll down his blood-splattered cheek, his shattered chest heaving as he struggled to get the words out. “B... b...”

Sebastian could feel the man beginning to go limp in his arms. “Basil? Basil Rhodes? Is that it?” Or was the man trying to say bastard? “Who sent you?” shouted Sebastian again.

But the man stared up at him with dead, vacant eyes.

?The authorities of Bethnal Green were not pleased to have their Sunday disturbed by two killings. It was a long time before Sebastian made it back to Brook Street. By then, Hero had taken the boys to visit Hendon in Berkeley Square. So he changed his dusty, torn clothes, left her a message, and had his black mare saddled to ride out to Richmond Park.

He went first to the keeper’s cottage, where he found the keeper’s wife, Sally Hammond, feeding the ducks down by the pond. Cato Coldfield’s black-and-white dog, Bounder, lay a short distance away, his head on his paws and his ears limp.

“How’s he doing?” asked Sebastian, nodding toward the dog.

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