C Harris - Where Shadows Dance

“Don’t be a fool,” snapped Jarvis. “No one is more aware than I of the gravity of the situation. I have put every available man on this, and so far they have turned up nothing. Nothing.” He held Sebastian’s gaze in a long, steady stare. “I can’t begin to understand precisely what has developed between you and my daughter these past two months. But right now, that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except Hero. You fancy yourself adept at solving mysteries? Then solve this one. Find her.

“Before it’s too late.”

It didn’t take Hero long to discern that the taller of the two men who’d grabbed her was the leader.

He sat beside her on the forward-facing seat, his body swaying easily with the lurching movement of the antiquated carriage, his head tipped back against the worn velvet swabs, his watchful gaze never straying far from her face. He kept his finger curled around the trigger of the pistol held resting in an easy but purposeful grip on his thigh.

He was a well-made man, handsome even, with dark curling hair and a strongly boned face. But the slant of his full lips struck her as cruel, his pale gray eyes cold and hard as he nodded toward the sobbing abigail who sat bolt upright beside his confederate on the rear-facing seat. “Make her shut up.”

Hero leaned forward cautiously, one hand reaching out to touch the abigail’s knee. “Marie, hush. You must hush.”

The abigail stared at her with wild, unseeing eyes and wailed louder.

“That did a lot o’ good,” observed the buff-coated tough slouched in the corner beside the maid.

“I don’t know why you brought her,” said Hero.

“Don’t ye?” said the dark-haired man. Sullivan, she’d heard his companion call him. “She’s our insurance. Ye do what you’re told, she lives, and ye live. Ye don’t...”He shrugged. “She dies. First. Unpleasantly. It’s that simple.”

Fortunately, Marie was wailing so loud that the sense of most of that speech was lost on her.

Deliberately, Hero turned her head to stare out the window at the passing rows of unfamiliar shops and tradesmen’s ateliers. She felt the sting of threatening tears and blinked them away angrily.

She had no idea where they were taking her, or why. She knew only that the man beside her had lied. Neither she nor Marie would be allowed to live. Otherwise, he never would have let them see his face.

No one knew better than Sebastian just how ruthlessly thorough Jarvis’s minions could be. But on the off chance they’d missed something, he set Tom to scouring the neighborhood of the park and asked Calhoun to make inquiries amongst some of his more unsavory contacts.

Yet barring any unexpected discoveries or a demand from the kidnappers, it seemed to Sebastian that his only hope of ever seeing Hero alive again lay in finding Alexander Ross’s murderer. Quickly.

And so he went in search of the Russian, Dimitri Chernishav.

The Colonel was coming out of his lodgings in Westminster’s Adington Buildings when Sebastian caught him by one arm and the back of his coat to spin him around and slam his face against a nearby brick wall.

“What the devil?” growled the Russian, heaving against Sebastian’s hold. But Sebastian had the man’s arm held in an iron grip and bent behind his back at a painful angle.

“Miss Jarvis,” said Sebastian quietly, bringing his lips close to the other man’s ear as he increased the leverage on his arm. “Where is she?”

“You are making a mistake,” said Chernishav, panting.

“Diplomatically, or tactically?”

“Both. I heard Lord Jarvis’s daughter has been taken. But I am not responsible. Why would I do such a thing?”

“As a distraction, perhaps?”

“From what?”

“My attempts to discover the truth about what happened a week ago last Saturday.”

The Russian was silent a moment. Then he said, “I did not kill Alexander. Why would I?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that your plans for that evening had nothing to do with a pint at Cribb’s Parlour. You went to Ross’s rooms to take delivery of Napoléon’s latest war briefing.”

The Russian’s face twisted into a disdainful sneer. “And you are aggrieved because I failed to disclose this fact to you? I told you before, Devlin; there is much involved here of which you are ignorant.”

Sebastian increased the torque on the man’s arm. “So, educate me.”

Chernishav gave a ragged laugh. “Break my arm if you feel you must. But it will serve no purpose. I still won’t tell you anything.”

“Let me help you out, shall I? The Russian Czar is pressing the British government for an active alliance that will involve a commitment of troops to help deflect Napoléon’s push toward Moscow. But certain elements within the government—the Earl of Hendon amongst them—are reluctant to divert troops to Russia at a time when they may soon be needed to protect Canada. Nevertheless, despite the lack of a formal treaty of alliance, the Foreign Office has been supplying Russia with copies of the French military dispatches, which regularly make their way out of Paris via a band of smugglers in contact with a certain rare-books collector named Antoine de La Rocque.”

“Ah.” The Russian looked thoughtful. “That I did not know. But it does help explain why he is now dead.”

“As is the Swedish trader Carl Lindquist,” said Sebastian.

“I never knew Mr. Lindquist.”

“Maybe not,” said Sebastian. “But Alexander Ross did.”

“Then perhaps, rather than assaulting diplomats in the street, you should instead consider turning your attention to someone who did have dealings with Alexander Ross, Antoine de La Rocque, and this Carl Lindquist.”

“As in, someone else in the Foreign Office?”

“It seems logical, does it not?”

Sebastian shifted his hold on the Russian Colonel. “The copy of the briefing you were to receive the night of July eighteenth—what happened to it?”

“I’ve no idea. I’m told Sir Hyde searched Alexander’s rooms the next morning, but the briefing was never found. We were given a new copy just a few days ago.”

Sebastian frowned. “Ross’s man, Poole, notified Sir Hyde as soon as he found Ross dead?”

“Yes. It was Sir Hyde who called Dr. Cooper.”

“And subtly suggested to the good doctor that Ross may have suffered from morbus cordis ? ”

“Perhaps. I wasn’t there.”

Sebastian gave a grim smile. “One last question. When we met at the Queen’s reception, you told me of a quarrel at Vauxhall between Ross and the Turkish Ambassador. You knew of the rumors that Madame Ramadani had seduced someone in the Foreign Office?”

“I had heard whispers, yes.”

“But you didn’t believe them?”

“I didn’t believe it was Alexander. You didn’t know him; I did. He was fiercely loyal, not only to his country but to his friends and to the woman he loved. He would never have played her false.”

“So where did the rumor originate?”

“One might suspect with the man who actually did allow himself to be seduced.”

Sebastian released the Russian and took a step back. “You mean, someone like Sir Hyde Foley?”

Chernishav adjusted his cravat. “I don’t know for certain. But it’s what I suspect, yes.”

With a rising sense of urgency, Sebastian tracked Foley from Downing Street to Carlton House to Whitehall. He was just turning in through the classical screen of the Admiralty when he heard the shrill, ungenteel accents of his tiger raised above the rumble of wagons and carriages in the street.

“Gov’nor!”

Sebastian turned to see Tom darting between a ponderous coal wagon and the high-stepping pair of shiny blacks pulling a phaeton.