Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 27

Sebastian studied his reflection in the mirror, then leaned forward to add a touch more ash to his hair, blending it in until he gave all the appearance of a man just beginning to go gray.

He wore a decidedly unfashionable coat and sturdy breeches of a cut that would give his aunt Henrietta an apoplexy if she were to see them, for they’d come not from the exclusive shops of Bond Street but from a secondhand clothing dealer in Rosemary Lane. There were times when Sebastian’s aristocratic bearing and the trappings of wealth gave him a decided advantage. But there were other times when it served his purpose better to pretend to be someone else.

He was just slipping a slim but deadly knife into a sheath in his right boot when Tom came hurtling into the dressing room, bringing with him the scent of the rain that had been threatening all morning.

“There’s somethin’ you might want to know about that captain in the ’Orse Guards, that Captain Quail you asked me to trail. I think he mighta run into debt. Seems ’is wife threatened to leave ’im if ’e didn’t spend more time with ’er. And seein’ as ’er da is the one with all the blunt, that’s why ’e’s been sticking pretty close to ’ome.”

Sebastian kept his attention on the task of tying his dark cravat. “Keep looking into it when you have the chance. There’s no doubt the man’s hiding something. I’m just not certain it’s related.”

Tom eyed Sebastian’s unfashionable rig. “What’s this fer, then?”

Sebastian adjusted his modest shirt points. “Greenwich.” He turned away from the mirror. “How would you like to take a ride on a hoy?”

“Gore,” said Tom on a breath of pure ecstasy as the hoy slid past the Tower of London and the docks beyond, past merchantmen lying heavy in the water with their cargoes of sugar and tobacco, indigo and coffee, their masts thick against the cloud-filled sky.

Sebastian stood at the rail, the moist wind cool against his face as he watched the tiger dart from one side of the boat to the other, dodging coiled lines and scattered crates and some half a dozen fellow passengers. Sebastian smiled to himself. “Ever been to Greenwich?”

Tom shook his head, his eyes wide as the hoy slipped past the massive bulk of India House and, beyond that, the docks and warehouses of the West India Trading Company on the Isle of Dogs.

“We should have time to take a look at the Queen’s House and the Naval Academy, if you’re interested.”

“And the Observatory?”

Sebastian laughed. “And the Observatory.”

Tom squinted up at the rusty red-brown canvas flapping in the wind. The hoy was spritsail rigged, with a topsail over a huge mainsail and a large foresail. Its flat-bottomed design made it perfect for the shallow waters and narrow rivers of the Thames estuary it plied. “This cove ye want me to nose out about—this Captain Edward Bellamy—what you expectin’ to find?”

“I’m hoping for something that might link either the captain or his son to Carmichael, Stanton, and Thornton.”

Tom screwed up his face. “It don’t seem likely. A clergyman, a ship’s captain, a banker, and a lord?”

“You’d be surprised at the threads that can bind one man to the next, across all levels of society. Or one woman to the next.”

“You want I should listen to the jabber about Mrs. Bellamy while I’m at it? If there is one?”

A line from Donne’s poem kept running through Sebastian’s head. And swear, no where, lives a woman true and fair…. It had occurred to him that he’d given little thought to the mothers of these murdered young men: the Reverend’s recently dead wife, Mary Thornton; Lady Stanton, who’d insisted her son return early for her dinner party and was now said to be so hysterical her doctors were keeping her sedated; and Barclay Carmichael’s mother, the marquis’s daughter, the woman who tended to the needs of the working poor and had lobbied her husband to limit the hours labored by children in his factories and mines. He’d been focused on finding a tie among the young men’s fathers. Yet couldn’t the link as easily lie with the victims’ mothers?

Sebastian settled back against the rail. “I think that might be a good idea.”