Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 54

Sebastian closed the log, then sat for a time staring down at the charred leather. It was one thing to suspect that the passengers and officers of the Harmony had resorted to cannibalism and murder, but something else entirely to read the terse record of their long, horrible ordeal.

The Harmony’s log explained much about the recent killings that had before seemed incomprehensible. He now understood that the strangely varying mutilation to which each of the victims had been subjected corresponded exactly to the lots drawn by their parents after Gideon’s murder. Adrian Bellamy had been spared the others’ butchery not because his killer had been interrupted, as they’d supposed, but because his father, Captain Bellamy, had not himself partaken of the dead cabin boy’s flesh.

Yet the deliberate ordering of the killings struck Sebastian as less logical. It made sense that Barclay Carmichael had died before Dominic Stanton, since Sir Humphrey Carmichael had personally slit Gideon’s throat while Lord Stanton had held the boy down. But Reverend Thornton had simply given the boy last rites. Why had his child been the first to die? And why had Captain Bellamy’s son been slated as second on the list? Whatever his reasoning, the killer had considered his ranking of the victims so important that he had reserved the mandrake root for Adrian Bellamy even when the naval lieutenant’s absence had forced the killer to move on to the next victim on his list.

But what struck Sebastian as the most vexing question of all was, How had the killer known in such excruciating detail the events that had transpired aboard that ship? The only logical explanation that presented itself was that the killer had been there on the ship himself.

Was that possible? What if one of the crew members had been left behind when the others mutinied and abandoned ship? Bellamy’s log entries had been brief and sporadic; would he have bothered to name one or two crewmen who’d been abandoned by their shipmates? Sebastian was just flipping back to Bellamy’s listing of the Harmony’s original twenty-one crew members when the sound of the knocker followed by his father’s voice in the hall brought his head up.

“I thought you’d sworn never to darken my doorway again,” said Sebastian when the Earl appeared at the entrance to the library.

Hendon jerked off his gloves and tossed them along with his hat and walking stick onto a nearby table. “Something has come up.”

He went to stand before the empty hearth, his hands clasped behind his back, his weight rocking from his heels to the balls of his feet. “I’ve never claimed to be a saint. You know that,” he said gruffly.

Sebastian leaned back in his chair, his gaze on the Earl’s heavily jowled face. He had no doubt as to why his father was here. A man who had once offered a young actress twenty thousand pounds to leave his son alone was not likely to sit idle and let their marriage take place now without doing everything in his power to stop it—and then some. Sebastian gave his father a cold smile. “I know you’re no saint.”

“I’ve kept mistresses over the years. After your mother left, and before.”

“I’ve made Kat my mistress. Now I intend to take her as my wife.”

“For God’s sake, Sebastian! Just hear me out, please. This isn’t easy. One of the women I had in my keeping was a young Irish-woman by the name of Arabella. Arabella Noland. Her father was a clergyman from a small market town to the northwest of Waterford, a place called Carrick-on-Suir. Ever hear of it?”

“No.”

“It was the birthplace of Anne Boleyn.”

Sebastian knew a deep sense of uneasiness, although he had no idea where his father could possibly be going with all this. “And?”

“She came to London with her sister, Emma. Emma married a barrister by the name of Stone. She’s made something of a name for herself over the years as a moralistic writer, much in the vein of Hannah More. Perhaps you’ve heard of her.”

“I’ve heard of her.”

“Yes. Well, the younger sister, Arabella, was by far the prettier and the more lively. There was no dowry to speak of, and the family was from the meanest gentry—and Irish to boot. Arabella—”

“Became your mistress? Is that what you’re saying? When was this?”

“Twenty-some-odd years ago. You were still in leading strings.”

Sebastian pushed up from his chair. “If you think by means of this tale to dissuade me from my marriage to Kat—”

“Let me finish. We were together for more than three years. Then she learned she was with child.”

Sebastian watched as his father swung away to brace his outstretched arms against the marble mantelpiece. It was a moment before he could go on. “You know how such things are often handled. A servant delivers the infant to the parish along with a small sum of money, or the child is farmed out to a nursemaid in some mean hovel. They never survive. Perhaps that’s the whole point. I don’t know. But it’s not what I was suggesting. I found a good home for the child—a family of respectable yeoman farmers whom I had every intention of supervising carefully.”

“But she didn’t want to give up the child, I take it?”

Dark color stained the Earl’s cheeks. “No. She begged me to abandon the scheme. I tried to make her understand that anything else was impossible. I even thought I’d succeeded. But then, several months before the child was to be born, she disappeared. I searched for her, but to no avail. Sometime later I received a note from Ireland. It said simply, ‘You have a daughter. She is well. Do not attempt to find us.’”

Hendon pushed away from the mantel and swung to face Sebastian. “This morning, Emma Stone paid a visit to Kat Boleyn. It seems the woman is Kat’s aunt. She brought her these.” Reaching into his pocket, he drew forth two miniatures that he laid on the desk beside Sebastian. “They’re portraits of her parents.”

The woman in the first painting was a stranger, although it was easy enough to trace the likeness to Kat in the beguiling juxtaposition of that childish nose and the full, sensuous lips. The second portrait was of the Earl of Hendon as he had been twenty-five years ago. Sebastian stared down at the twin porcelain ovals framed in filigree and felt an explosive welling of denial and fury and fear. “No.”

He slammed away from the desk. “Mother of God. Is there nothing to which you will not stoop in your effort to prevent this marriage?”

“No,” said Hendon in rare honesty. “But even I could not have invented this.”

“I don’t believe any of it. Do you hear me? I don’t believe it.”

Hendon’s jaw worked back and forth. “Talk to Miss Boleyn. Talk to Mrs. Emma Stone—”

“Have no fear that I shall!”

“They’ll tell you the same tale.”

Sebastian swept his arm across the desktop, sending the miniatures flying. “Goddamn you. Goddamn you all to hell.”

Hendon’s eyes—those vivid blue St. Cyr eyes that were so inescapably like Kat’s—twitched with pain. “You can’t blame me for the fact that you fell in love with that woman.”

“Then who the hell do I blame?” raged Sebastian.

“God.”

“I don’t believe in God,” said Sebastian, and he slammed out of the house.