C Harris - Where Shadows Dance

Dressed as he was, in formal knee breeches and low shoes, Sebastian had no weapon, not even the dagger he habitually kept sheathed in his boot. He held himself very still, listening as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs.

One man, only , Sebastian thought.

He could hear the man’s quick breathing as he paused outside the door. Then Sebastian heard the soft click of metal against metal and recognized it for what it was: a picklock. He smiled into the darkness.

He heard the unseen intruder grunt, pleased but evidently not unduly surprised to find the door unlatched. There was a faint clatter of metal shafts clicking against their mates as the man put the thieves’ tool away. Then, as Sebastian watched, the door latch slowly turned. The panel swung inward and the intruder stepped into the room.

He was carrying a horn lantern, its light carefully shielded so that it formed only a narrow slash. But this was no ordinary thief. Like Sebastian, he wore evening clothes: satin knee breeches, a black coat, silk stockings, and silver-buckled shoes. Sebastian waited until he had taken two steps into the room. Then Sebastian reached out, grabbed the man by the back of his coat, and shoved him forward, hard.

Caught by surprise, the man stumbled, off balance. Sebastian slammed his foot into the back of the man’s right knee. With a startled cry, he crashed to his out-flung hands and knees; the lantern smashed and went out.

One hand still fisted in the back of the man’s coat, Sebastian brought his right arm across the front of the man’s throat and yanked him back, Sebastian’s right hand bracing against his own left elbow as he shifted his other hand to press against the back of the man’s head.

“hat the devil? ” exclaimed the man, flailing around with his arms, trying to reach the unknown and unseen assailant behind him.

“Who are you?” whispered Sebastian, his lips close to the man’s ear. “What are you doing here?”

“Who the devil are you ?” snarled the man, his nails raking across the back of Sebastian’s head and sending his top hat flying.

Sebastian tightened his chokehold. “I ask the questions. You answer them.”

“Bugger you,” spat the man and threw himself violently to one side.

They went down together, pain exploding across Sebastian’s ribs as he crashed into a small table that shattered beneath him. Sebastian lost his grip on the man’s neck and caught a heel in his groin. His breath left his body in a whoosh, and he rolled reflexively to one side.

Scrambling up onto his hands and knees, the man lunged through the open door into the hall. Diving after him, Sebastian caught the man’s foot and tried to yank him back. The shoe came off in Sebastian’s hand as the man reared up and pivoted to face him. Sebastian saw the gleam of a knife in his hand.

“Whoever you are,” sneered the man, “you just made your last mistake.”

Sebastian surged to his feet, the leather dress shoe still in his hand, as the man slashed at Sebastian’s eyes.

Sebastian jerked his head back, the knife whistling through the air. Then he stepped forward and slammed the shoe against the side of the man’s head. The buckle bit deep, drawing blood.

Swearing, the man fell back, one hand swiping at the trickle of blood running down the side of his face. With a growl, he lunged at Sebastian, the knife clenched in his fist.

Sebastian sidestepped and felt his legs slam against the banister.

The man turned with a grin. “Got you, you bastard,” he said and lunged again.

His back to the banister, Sebastian dropped. With his gaze on the other man’s face, Sebastian knew the exact moment when the man realized what he’d done.

His lips twisted in a foul oath, the knife still clutched in his hand, he shot over the railing and plunged headfirst into the darkened stairwell.

S ebastian rose slowly to his feet, his breath coming hard and fast. He started to close the door to Alexander Ross’s rooms, only to pause and reach in to snatch up his hat from where it had fallen. Then he charged down the stairs.

He found the man sprawled near the base of the flight of steps, his eyes open and fixed, his neck bent back at an unnatural angle.

“Hell and the devil confound it,” said Sebastian softly.

He realized he was still holding the man’s shoe; a gentleman’s shoe, barely worn, made of fine leather with a silver buckle. He dropped the shoe beside the body and eased the knife from the man’s tight fist. It was always possible the man had friends waiting outside.

Descending the remaining flight of stairs, Sebastian carefully let himself out. A mist was rolling in from the river. Standing on the flagway, he threw a quick glance up and down the street.

Nothing.

He drew the night air deep into his lungs and felt a twinge where the broken wood of the smashed table had raked across his side. Adjusting the set of his hat, he strode rapidly up the street toward Piccadilly. But when he reached the corner, he hesitated.

Since learning the bitter truth of his parentage, Sebastian had refused all attempts at communication from his father—from the Earl of Hendon , he corrected himself. But Kat was right. There was something he needed to do.

He turned his steps toward Grosvenor Square.

Once, the vast granite pile of the Earls of Hendon on Grosvenor Square had echoed with the shouts and laughter of a large, boisterous family. Now, all were alienated from one another, or dead, the house inhabited solely by one lonely old man and his servants.

Dismissing his father’s butler with a silent nod, Sebastian paused in the doorway of the library, his gaze on the man who sat dozing in his habitual, comfortably worn chair beside the hearth. He was still a large man, despite his sixty-odd years, his features blunt, a shock of thick white hair fallen over his forehead. He had his head tipped back, his mouth slack with sleep, his eyes closed. A book—doubtless The Orations of Cicero or some such work—lay open on his lap.

Of the three young boys Hendon called son, only the youngest, Sebastian, had shared the Earl’s love of classical literature. Sebastian’s enthusiasm for the works of Homer and Caesar had delighted the Earl, even if Sebastian’s reading tastes did range further afield than Hendon would have liked, to Catullus and Sappho and Petronius.

Yet the Earl’s pleasure in this youngest child’s precociousness had always been tinged with an element of odd perplexity that at times bordered on resentment. It was an attitude that both confused and hurt Sebastian, as a child. He’d never understood the sudden, icy aloofness that could tighten the Earl’s jaw and cause him to turn away.

Now he did.

For a long moment Sebastian simply stood in the doorway, awash in a complex swirl of emotions—anger and resentment mingling with hurt and an unwanted but powerful upsurge of love that startled him by its intensity. Then the Earl’s eyes fluttered open and the two men stared at each other from across the room.

Sebastian said stiffly, “I expected to find you abed.”

“I would have been, soon.” Hendon wiped one hand across his mouth but otherwise held himself quite still, as if afraid the least unstudied motion might cause his son—or, rather, the man he’d called son for nearly thirty years—to vanish from his sight. “Come in. Pour yourself a brandy.”

Sebastian shook his head. “I’m here to tell you that the notice of my engagement will appear in Monday’s Post .” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded tight, stilted.

He saw the delight mingled with surprise and wariness that leapt in the old man’s eyes. For years, Hendon had pressed Sebastian to marry, to beget the next St. Cyr heir. A supreme irony, given that the only St. Cyr blood flowing through Sebastian’s veins had come to him from his mother, the errant Countess who had in that way of noble families married her own distant cousin.