Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 65

Sir Henry Lovejoy hunched his shoulders against the rain as he watched his constables bundle the Kentish doctor out of the stables.

“I thought this wasn’t your case?” said Devlin, coming up beside him.

“It’s not,” said Henry, swinging his head to look at the Viscount. He stood hatless in the rain, his once fine coat, waistcoat, and breeches torn and smeared with mud and blood and bits of leaves and straw. “Good God. We need to get you to a surgeon.”

“It’ll keep.” Devlin scrubbed a hand across his face, wiping the rain from his eyes. “How’s the boy?”

“He’s a good lad. He’ll be all right. Thanks to the laudanum, I don’t think he remembers much. But I’ve no doubt his testimony—combined with whatever evidence a search of the farm buildings yields—will be more than enough to see the good doctor hang.”

Devlin’s features remained impassive as he stared off across the mist-filled valley. “There are some bodies in the wood just past the second tollgate out of London. You might want to send a couple of your men to deal with them.”

“Bodies?”

“Lord Stanton and several of his henchmen. They tried to kill me.”

“And so you killed them?”

“I was in a hurry.”

Henry sighed.

“Sir Henry.”

Henry turned to see Constable Higgins coming toward them across the yard, his plump cheeks red with exertion, something small and white clutched in one fist. “Constable?”

“I thought you’d want to see this,” said Higgins, holding out a small porcelain figurine. “We found it in a bag under the seat of Newman’s gig.”

“What is it?” said Henry.

The Viscount reached to take the delicate statue in his hands. “A mermaid. It’s a mermaid.”

Henry groped for his handkerchief. “Merciful heavens.”

“What will happen to them?” Devlin asked, staring down at the figurine. “I mean Atkinson and Carmichael and the absent Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop.”

“Nothing, I suspect. I’ve never known the Crown to prosecute cases of cannibalism on the high seas.”

“Actually, I was thinking about what they did to David Jarvis.”

Henry shrugged. “We’ve no way of knowing who struck the fatal blow.”

“The crew was hanged for his death.”

“The crew was hanged for mutiny.”

Devlin’s lips flattened into a sardonic smile. “Of course.”

Henry knew a profound inner sense of uneasiness. “You’re planning something. What is it?”

A gleam of amusement touched the Viscount’s haunted yellow eyes. “I don’t think you want to know.”

“I think I’ve patched you up more in the past nine months than I did during the War,” said Paul Gibson, wrapping a length of bandage around Sebastian’s upper arm. “Here. Put your finger on that.”

They were in Sebastian’s library, with Sebastian seated, shirtless, on the edge of his desk. He smiled and held the end of the bandage in place while the doctor rummaged in his bag for a pair of scissors. “What is war, after all, but an organized, sanctioned form of mass murder?”

Gibson cut the length of gauze and tied it off, his attention seemingly all for his work. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard the latest rumors?”

“What rumors?”

“About Russell Yates and Kat Boleyn. They’ve been married by special license.”

“What?”

Gibson pushed out his breath in a sigh. “I was afraid you didn’t know anything about it.”

“No,” said Sebastian. “I didn’t.” He fixed his gaze unseeingly on the bowl of bloody water beside them while his friend went to work on the knife cuts on Sebastian’s wrists. Ever since he’d turned Aaron Newman over to Sir Henry down at Oak Hollow Farm, Sebastian had been trying to figure out how, with marriage out of the question, he was going to keep Kat safe from Jarvis. But it seemed Kat had found a way to protect herself.

Now, freed from the desperate rush to catch a killer and devise some way to shield Kat from Jarvis’s malevolence, Sebastian suddenly found himself with nothing to distract him from the brutal reality of a future without Kat as his love, without Kat in his life. He felt a hideous emptiness yawn deep within his being, and for one blinding moment, the agony of it was so raw that it took his breath.

“Sebastian—” Gibson broke off as the sound of running feet and the bang of a distant door foretold the arrival of Tom.

“I’ve found one,” said Tom, his breath coming fast and his cheeks flushed. “I found you a valet. ’E’s been a gentleman’s gentleman for more’n twenty years. ’E knows all about yer interest in murder and the rigs from Rosemary Lane you sometimes wear, and it don’t bother ’im a bit. In fact, ’e’ll be a right handy one to ’ave around next time we find ourselves with a murder to investigate, ’cause ’e knows near every rookery and cracksman and Black Legs in town.”

Sebastian slid off the edge of the desk. “And how, precisely, does he come to have this information?”

“’Is ma owns the Blue Anchor.”

“She what?” The Blue Anchor was the most notorious flash house in town, frequented by the worst sort of Morocco Men, dashers and beau-traps.

Tom swallowed. “I know what yer thinking, but you got it wrong. Calhoun’s ma was determined ’er son weren’t going to grow up to be no receiver or fancy man, and ’e ’asn’t.” Tom hesitated. “’Cept for one brief spell ’e did in Newgate, and that weren’t ’is fault.”

Gibson choked and turned away to hide his amusement.

“What did you say this paragon’s name is?” asked Sebastian.

“Jules Calhoun. ’E says ’e can come round tomorrow evening for an interview, if’n yer interested.” Tom cast a worried glance at Gibson, who was now openly laughing. “Are you interested?”

“After weeks of making due with the footman? Of course I’m interested.” Sebastian pointed a warning finger at his tiger. “But if so much as a shoestring goes missing in this house, it’ll be on your account.”

Tom’s face cleared. “’E’s a right one. You’ll see.”

Tom dashed off, while Gibson set about collecting his various implements and returning them to his bag. After a moment, he said, “Have you seen her yet?” There was no need to identify which her he referred to. Kat’s name hovered between them still.

Sebastian crossed the room to splash brandy into two glasses. “No. Not yet.”

Gibson looked up from his task. “You’re going to have to find some way to put it all behind you, Sebastian. Kat. The War. The things you saw, the things you did.” This desperate, futile quest to find your mother. Again the words hung in the air, unsaid but there.

Sebastian came to hand his friend his drink. “And have you put it all behind you then, Paul? The War? The loss of your leg?” The hunger for the sweet relief to be found in an elixir of poppies?

The skin beside Gibson’s eyes crinkled in amusement as he raised his brandy in a silent toast. “No. But we doctors are always better at giving advice than taking it.”