C Harris: Where Shadows Dance

Beneath the smooth leather soles of his boots, the old tiles were wet and slippery with moss. He moved cautiously up over the ridge of the roof. He could feel the residual heat from the kilns’ soaring chimneys warm on his back as he hunkered low at the far edge of the slope.

From here he looked down on the wide raised platform that ran along the back of the workshop. At the far edge of the platform, Chernishav waited, motionless, his form all but lost in the shadows cast by the hundreds and hundreds of four-foot lengths of fat drainpipe stored on end beside him. A jagged arc of lightning flashed across the sky, and Sebastian saw the gleam of the stiletto in the Russian’s hand. Around them, the rain poured, filling the air with the scent of wet clay.

Loosening his own dagger in its sheath in his boot, Sebastian dropped to the near edge of the shelf below. The impact shook the nearest row of drainpipes. Sebastian gave them a helpful shove.

They toppled slowly, the first row falling against the next, which in turn collapsed onto the next row until the entire mass of drainpipes tumbled over like dominoes in a rolling crescendo of clattering, shattering earthenware. Chernishav swung around, saw the wall of pipe crashing toward him, and leapt off the platform into the yard below.

Sebastian landed in a crouch a few feet from him, his dagger in his hand. The Russian pirouetted gracefully, his stiletto extended like a foil, his left arm curled in the classic fencing pose.

“So,” said Chernishav, his teeth bared in a smile. “Here we are.”

“You fence, I take it?” said Sebastian.

“Since childhood,” said Chernishav, flexing his wrist. “I hear you were a cavalry officer. Unfortunately, your saber is a little short.”

“So’s your foil,” said Sebastian.

“True.”

The two men circled each other warily. They were equally matched, of much the same height and build, both well trained in the arts of war. But each held a very different type of blade. The Russian’s stiletto was a thrusting weapon with no edge, while Sebastian’s dagger had carefully honed edges but was considerably shorter.

Chernishav struck first, lunging forward like a fencer thrusting with a foil, his stiletto aimed for Sebastian’s heart.

Sebastian sidestepped the thrust, dancing away easily to the right, his boots sliding over the muddy wet cobbles of the pottery yard. Lightning played across the heavy clouds pressing down on the waterfront; the rain pounded.

“The advantage is mine, I think,” said Chernishav. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Why make Miss Jarvis a widow before you have the opportunity to make her your wife?”

“You’d have me simply walk away?”

“Why not?”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Sebastian said, “I told you why not.”

With a grimace, Chernishav struck again. Again, Sebastian skittered to the right. The repetition was deliberate; he was setting up the expectation of the pattern in the Russian’s mind.

The Colonel lunged a third time, expecting Sebastian to once more fall away to the right. Only this time, instead of dancing away, Sebastian stepped into the Russian’s lunge. It was a street fighter’s trick: Clamping his left fist around the man’s right wrist, Sebastian yanked the Colonel forward and stepped in to plunge his dagger up under the man’s sternum. Driving straight toward the heart.

He saw the Colonel’s eyes widen in surprise. Sebastian stepped back. Chernishav dropped to his knees, his hands coming up to clutch his chest as he toppled forward.

“So much for your bloody immunity,” said Sebastian, and swiped the dripping rain from his face.

Thursday, 30 July

The chapel of the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth was small but graceful, with soaring lancet windows, a black-and-whitetiled marble floor, and delicate stone tracery that seemed to have captured and held the scent of some five centuries’ worth of burning incense.

Charles, Lord Jarvis, stood just inside the chapel door, his snuffbox clasped in one hand, a frown lowering his brows. Slowly and deliberately, he nodded to the man known to the world as the groom’s father. Hendon responded with the smallest of bows. Neither man smiled.

Owing to the hasty nature of the ceremony, the guest list was necessarily small. Devlin’s only surviving sibling, Lady Wilcox, had evidently chosen not to attend—if indeed she had been invited. But the redoubtable Dowager Duchess of Claiborne was there, looking fierce in puce satin and a towering feathered turban. Also in attendance were a peg- legged Irish surgeon of doubtful antecedents and a Bow Street magistrate, of all things.

The bride’s only living grandmother, the cantankerous old Dowager Lady Jarvis, had condescended to put in an appearance, as had Jarvis’s two bird-witted sisters. The three women huddled together to one side, their eyes wide with vulgar curiosity as they whispered speculatively behind their fans. It occurred to Jarvis that the only member of the assembled company who actually looked happy about the coming nuptials was his own half-mad wife, the bride’s mother, who stood with her face suffused with an idiotic kind of joy. And he found himself wondering how many of those in attendance—if any—knew the real reason for the quickly arranged wedding.

The truth would be obvious soon enough.

He transferred his gaze to his daughter. She was looking exceptionally lovely in an exquisite gown of white silk with a high-waisted bodice and small puffed sleeves embroidered with tiny blue rose sprays. Hero had always possessed unerring taste. A scoop neck edged in lace flowed into a V-shaped, charmingly gathered back, while a row of slightly larger rose sprays trimmed the hem above a long flounce of delicate lace. She had crimped her fine brown hair into soft curls that framed her face charmingly. Around her neck she wore a single strand of pearls with a sapphire pendant, a wedding gift from her husband. Devlin had clasped the necklace around her throat just moments ago. Jarvis had watched his daughter color faintly at her future husband’s touch.

It was a reaction Jarvis would not have expected.

Jarvis transferred his gaze to the groom, who stood now near the altar, his head tipped to one side as he conversed in low tones with the Archbishop. Devlin looked relaxed and remarkably untroubled, although Jarvis noticed he had done little more than nod to Hendon.

Devlin and Jarvis himself had exchanged only the coldest of unsmiling bows.

Flicking open his snuffbox, Jarvis raised a pinch to one nostril and inhaled sharply. Then he closed the box with a snap and tucked it away. Walking up to his daughter, he held out his arm. “Ready?” he asked.

She put her gloved hand on his crooked elbow. For a moment, her gaze strayed to the tall young Viscount near the altar. Then she brought her gaze back to her father’s face and surprised him by giving him a reassuring smile.

“Ready.”

That night, long after the wedding breakfast with its awkward strained silences and thinly veiled hostilities, and long after Sebastian had brought his new bride home and shown her to her rooms, he stood at the open window of his bedchamber, his gaze on the darkened rooftops and church spires of the city, the air cold against his naked flesh.

Swept clean by a brisk wind off the North Sea, the sky was unusually clear and full of stars, the streets below now quiet and empty. He could smell the hot oil from the lamps left burning at the top of his front steps, hear the distant cry of the watchman. “One o’clock on a fair night, and all is well.”

He held a glass of burgundy in his hand, but he had not tasted it, for he knew with quiet resignation that this was but the first of an endless string of lonely nights that stretched before him. He was a young man with all of a healthy young man’s appetites and a wife who was a wife in name only. A different kind of man might take that as a license to dishonor his marriage vows, but not Sebastian.