Chapter 35
Sebastian was walking down Tower Hill toward where he’d left his curricle, when he spotted a lanky man with protuberant lips who was leaning against the front of one of the older houses.
“Why the bloody hell are you following me?” Sebastian demanded, stopping in front of him.
Sid Cotton straightened with a slow, insolent smile. “I’m hurt, I am, ye talkin’ to me like that. And me thinkin’ you’d be grateful I took the trouble to look ye up, seein’ as how I’m told ye was askin’ after me last night at the pub.”
“Yes. Right before someone tried to kill me.”
“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”
“If true, that’s probably the first honest thing you’ve said to me.”
Cotton splayed a hand over his heart. “I keep tellin’ ye I had nothin’ to do with that viscount’s death neither, and that’s the gospel truth.”
Sebastian grunted. “You were seen following Lord Ashworth on Bond Street just days before he died.”
Cotton’s eyes crinkled with a grin. “Course I was followin’ the bugger. I thought ye knew that.”
“Not exactly.”
“’Twas my way of givin’ him a friendly reminder about how I ain’t forgot what he owed me.” Cotton squinted down the lane toward the soot-stained walls of the ancient castle. “Ye can learn a lot about a man, following him.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“Seen some things, I did—seen ’em and heard ’em. Some things ye maybe don’t know about. Some things ye maybe don’t want to know about.”
“Meaning?”
Cotton threw up his hands as if to ward off Sebastian as he took a menacing step toward the man. “Meanin’ I’ll tell ye, but ye gots t’ promise not to take it out on me if’n you don’t like what I got to say.”
Sebastian rested his fists on his hips. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
Cotton sniffed and wiped the back of one hand across his nose. “That day I was following his lordship and saw him on Bond Street with his da? Well, I also seen him with another feller. A young buck.”
“What young buck?”
“I dunno his name. But I heard some of what they was saying.” Cotton’s loose fish mouth pulled into a wide smile. “Accused this young buck of cuckolding him, he did. Said something about babies too, but I wasn’t entirely clear on that part.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s strange, mobile face. He was beginning to notice there were times when Cotton forgot to drop his “g’s” and allowed his syntax and accent to slip into something considerably less in keeping with his affected persona. Something that suggested origins far from Seven Dials. “Where did this happen? It’s hardly the sort of discussion one would have in public.”
“There are ways to hear, even when folks think they’re being private.”
“You know who Ashworth was talking to?”
Sebastian wondered what Cotton saw in his eyes, because the man sidled a few feet away from him. “Said I didn’t!”
“Well, at least your instincts for self-preservation are in order. See that your ignorance likewise remains intact.”
“Whatever ye say, yer honor.”
Sebastian grunted. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Slipped my mind, it did.”
“Right.”
Sebastian knew Cotton’s waxing and waning memory served his own purposes. But that didn’t mean the information Cotton was feeding him was false.
Sebastian started to walk away, then paused to look back. “One more thing: Go anywhere near my wife again, and I’ll have you taken up for murder. Is that clear?”
“But I ain’t killed nobody!”
Sebastian gave a slow smile that showed his teeth, and shook his head.
“But I ain’t,” shouted Cotton as Sebastian walked away. “I ain’t!”
Half a dozen workmen were tossing the last of the rubble from the dismantled Swallow Street pub into a wagon bed when Sebastian paused to ask about Russell Firth.
“Don’t know fer sure where he’s at,” said one of the workers, a wiry, sun-darkened man who looked to be in his fifties if not older. “Ye might try lookin’ down on Piccadilly.”
“Piccadilly?”
“Aye. They’re fixin’ to put in a circus there.”
“On Piccadilly? Where?”
“Right smack on top o’ Lady Hatton’s house and gardens,” another of the men said with a grin. “Hear she ain’t too happy ’bout it.”
“Understandable,” said Sebastian.
A busy thoroughfare that ran from the Haymarket in the east to Hyde Park turnpike and Knightsbridge in the west, Piccadilly was home to numerous fashionable pubs and inns as well as such venerable booksellers as Hatchards. Sebastian half suspected the workmen might be wrong—until he saw Firth standing beside Lady Hatton’s garden wall, a notebook and pencil in hand.
“Here?” said Sebastian, leaving his horses with Giles and walking up to the young architect. “You’re going to put a circus here?”
Firth’s face broke into a wide grin that made him look likable in a way Sebastian found oddly troublesome. “It’ll be grand. You’ll see.”
Sebastian grunted. “I’ll believe it when it happens.”
Firth nodded toward the Stuart-era church that stood farther down Piccadilly. “The Regent originally wanted his New Street to wipe out St. James’s and its churchyard, but the uproar was too great. Turns out people object to having their loved ones dug up.”
“Imagine that.” Sebastian glanced down the street toward the church’s brick bell tower. Madame Blanchette had said her daughter, Giselle, was buried in St. James’s, Piccadilly.
Firth’s grin widened. “Shockingly selfish of them, isn’t it? I’m told the Regent is still having a hard time finding his way to understanding it.”
Sebastian brought his attention back to Firth. “You do realize that if you’re trying to protect Stephanie, the best way to do it is to be honest with me.”
Firth’s smile faded. “I beg your pardon?”
“Cut line. Ashworth not only knew you were in love with his wife; he suspected the twins might not be his. And it infuriated him enough that he confronted you about it just days before he died.”
Firth cast a quick, anxious look around and lowered his voice. “I didn’t kill him. I swear it.”
“Did Ashworth threaten you with a crim. com. case?” Under common law, crim. con.—short for criminal conversation or adultery—was a tort. Husbands had been known to sue their adulterous wives’ partners for as much as twenty thousand pounds. And they usually won.
“No,” said Firth, not quite meeting Sebastian’s eyes.
“Why not?”
“Presumably because he was too proud to tell the world he’d been cuckolded.”
“So you admit you and Stephanie were lovers?”
Firth sucked in a quick breath. “No. Never.”
Sebastian studied the younger man’s even, strained features. “If you’re innocent—which at this point is a big if—I’ll do my best to keep this from coming out. But you should know I’m not the only one asking questions.”
Firth’s eyes narrowed. “How did you find out what was said that day? I mean, who could know? Surely Ashworth didn’t tell anyone?”
“Your conversation was overheard.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Not really. Ashworth had a lot of enemies—and several of them were following him.”
“Dear God,” whispered Firth under his breath.
“If there is anything else—”
“No! I swear it.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Sebastian. And then he turned and walked away before his desire to manhandle the bastard overcame his already beleaguered self-restraint.
Sebastian spent the next half hour prowling the crowded churchyard of St. James’s, looking for a four-month-old grave.
Built of red brick with Portland stone dressings, the church of St. James’s, Piccadilly, dated back to the days of Charles II and Sir Christopher Wren. Its extensive churchyard was divided into two sections, one to the west fronting Jermyn Street and another to the north, separated from Piccadilly by the rectory, a watch house, and a stable.
He finally found Giselle Blanchette’s grave in the far southwestern corner of the churchyard. She was lucky her suicide hadn’t condemned her to an ignoble midnight burial at the crossroads with a stake through her heart. But the rector of St. James’s had nevertheless buried her as far from his church as he could. The grave bore only a small stone inscribed GISELLE MARIE BLANCHETTE, 1794 TO 1813. And, below that, EVIL SHALL SLAY THE WICKED, AND THEY THAT HATE THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL BE DESOLATE.
He stared at that inscription for a long time, his thoughts on the grief-stricken mother who had undoubtedly chosen it. “I’m sorry,” he said aloud to the dead girl. I’m sorry I didn’t stop him in time to save you. I’m sorry someone didn’t stop him long ago. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. And it came to him that he was doing a lot of apologizing to graves lately.
He lifted his head to stare across the jumble of graying, lichen-covered stones. The tragedy of Giselle Blanchette’s death lay heavily on his heart. He thought about the child she’d carried in her womb, the child fathered by a dangerous, evil man. Giselle had died rather than allow that child to be born. He firmly believed that all children were innocent of the sins of their fathers. And yet . . .
And yet Sebastian found himself desperately hoping that Ashworth’s suspicions had been right. That Stephanie’s twin boys were not, in truth, the seed of his loins.