Who Buries the Dead

Chapter 16

Hero arrived home from her early expedition to Covent Garden to find Devlin seated at his desk, fitting a new flint into his small, double-barreled pistol.

“The strangest thing happened at the market this morning,” she said, yanking off her yellow kid gloves as she walked into the library. “There was this man-” She broke off as Devlin looked up and she saw his face.

The room was filled with shadows, for the day had grown overcast and he had no need to kindle a candle to light his work. Yet even in the gloom, she could sense the taut, hard set of his features, see the lethal gleam in the strange yellow luminosity of his eyes. “What is it?” she said.

“Sinclair Oliphant is in London.”

She was suddenly, acutely aware of the ticking of the mantel clock, of the lean strength of his fingers as he worked on the gun. He had told her some of the events of that blood-soaked Portuguese spring. She knew of Oliphant’s betrayal and the hideous carnage that flowed from it. But she’d always suspected that Devlin hadn’t told her everything. That he was holding back some crucial component of the events of that day. And that what he hugged quietly to himself was the part that most lacerated his soul and drove him on a path to destruction.

She set aside her gloves. “You’ve seen him?”

He nodded. “Anne Preston came to me this morning. I think her main purpose was to try to convince me of Captain Wyeth’s innocence, but she also told me her father was afraid of Oliphant. It seems Preston objected to Oliphant’s actions as governor of Jamaica, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he used his influence with his cousin the Home Secretary to have Oliphant recalled.”

“You’re suggesting Oliphant might have hacked off Preston’s head and set it up on Bloody Bridge in revenge?”

“Personally? Probably not. Sinclair Oliphant has always preferred to let other people do his dirty work.”

She watched him square the flint to the frizzen and begin to tighten down. He was a man comfortable with violence, willing to use it when necessary and perhaps sometimes even welcoming it. But she did not believe he would take it upon himself to simply execute Oliphant, as he might once have done.

Then she wondered if he sensed the drift of her thoughts, because he said, “I’m not going to kill him out of hand and hang for it, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he has already tried to have me killed.”

She stared at him. “You think he was behind last night’s shooter? But. . you didn’t even know about his involvement with Preston until this morning.”

Devlin closed the frizzen and brought the flint gently down on it. “If Oliphant sent that shooter, it was because of Santa Iria, not because of Preston. As soon as Oliphant made the decision to return to London, he knew he was going to need to deal with me. And the people Oliphant deals with generally end up dead.”

“Then perhaps you should kill him,” she said. “As long as you can be certain you won’t hang for it, of course.”

His eyes crinkled with amusement, for he thought she spoke in jest. Except that she hadn’t. She loved him with a fierceness that could steal her breath and freeze her heart with the fear of losing him. But while she admired Devlin’s moral code, she did not completely share it. In many ways, she was still very much her father’s daughter.

He slipped the pistol into his pocket and rose to his feet. “If Oliphant was behind Stanley Preston’s murder, I’m going to see him hang for it.”

“And if he didn’t have Preston murdered?”

Devlin smiled again, this time with lethal purposefulness. “Then I’ll kill him when he comes to kill me.”