C. Harris - Who Buries the Dead

“Your father was right. Oliphant is dangerous. Very dangerous.”

Something in his voice must have given him away, for she looked at him strangely, her lips parting, a faint frown line creasing her forehead. “You know him?”

“I did. Once,” said Sebastian, and left it at that.

After she had gone, he went to stand before the long windows overlooking the terrace and the gardens below. The neatly edged parterres showed a vibrant green in the fitful sunshine, the newly turned earth a warm brown. But he saw only ancient stone walls burned black and a child’s doll lost in a drift of orange blossoms.

There are moments in the course of a man’s life that can irrevocably alter its path and sear his soul forever. Sebastian had encountered such a pivotal moment one cold spring in the mountains of Portugal, when he had obeyed the orders of a colonel he knew to be both vicious and deceitful, and dozens of innocent women and children had paid with their lives for his gullibility. Another man might have sought refuge in a string of excuses: I didn’t know. . I was simply obeying orders. . I was too late to save them. But not Sebastian. Their spilled blood had irrevocably colored his sense of who and what he was.

Once, he had sworn to avenge their deaths, sworn to kill Oliphant even if it meant he had to die for it himself. But, with time, he had come to realize that the drive for vengeance was his own, that it was his own pain he sought to ease, his own guilt he hoped to redeem. Those gentle, religious women who had dedicated their lives to the care of others, and died because of it, would have prayed for Sinclair Oliphant’s salvation. Not for his death.

Sebastian would not violate their memory by killing in their name. But there was a difference between vengeance and justice, and he was determined that the innocents of Santa Iria would have justice.

One way or another.

The elegant house on Mount Street so recently hired by Sinclair Oliphant for his gently bred wife and their five children rose five stories tall, its shiny black door flanked by polished brass lanterns, its marble front steps freshly scrubbed. Sebastian stood for a time on the footpath, his gaze on that stately facade, his thoughts on the man he’d last seen in a rough campaign tent in the mountains of Portugal. Colonial governorships were coveted, lucrative positions seldom surrendered voluntarily. If Stanley Preston was, in fact, behind Oliphant’s sudden, unexpected return to London, then Preston had made himself a dangerous enemy indeed.

Still thoughtful, Sebastian mounted the house’s front steps. His knock was answered by a somber butler who provided the information that his lordship was breakfasting that morning at White’s. But Sebastian had to trail Oliphant from the clubs of St. James’s through several exclusive shops in Bond Street before he finally came upon his former colonel at Manton’s shooting gallery in Davies Street.

Leaning against a nearby wall, Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and waited while Oliphant methodically culped wafers with one of Manton’s sleek new flintlock pistols. The man looked much as Sebastian remembered him. In his mid-forties now, he was trim, broad shouldered, and tall, with the erect carriage typical of a career military officer. His jaw was strong and square, his cheeks lean, his lips habitually curled into a smile that hid a capacity for self-interest that was brutal in its intensity.

Sebastian had no doubt that Oliphant was aware of his presence. But the colonel simply went on calmly hitting the rows of paper targets attached to an iron frame at the far end of the long, narrow room. After each shot, he paused, reloaded his pistol, and fired again, the acrid smoke billowing around them, until the last wafer went down. Only then did he turn to face Sebastian, his movements graceful and untroubled, almost bored.

It was the first time Sebastian had seen the colonel since he’d sent Sebastian on a mission deliberately calculated to end in so much innocent death. Now Sebastian searched the man’s clear blue eyes for some sign of guilt or regret or even discomfort. But he saw only the familiar self-satisfaction edged faintly with contempt. And he knew then that the events of that faraway spring-the deaths that had shattered Sebastian’s soul and marked him for life-had troubled the man who caused them not at all.

Sebastian felt a powerful surge of rage pulse through him. He wanted to smash his fist into that complacently smiling face. He wanted to feel flesh split and bone shatter beneath his driving knuckles. He wanted to wrap his hands around the man’s throat and crush it until he saw the life ebb from those hated eyes. And he had to clench his hands at his sides and force himself to take a deep, steadying breath before he could bring the surging bloodlust under control.

“I didn’t realize shooting had become a spectator sport,” said Oliphant, calmly passing the pistol to a waiting attendant.

Sebastian held himself very still. “Practicing in case someone should challenge you to a duel?”

Oliphant’s smile never slipped. “I like to keep my hand in.” He stripped off the leather sleeves he wore to protect his starched white cuffs and went to wash his hands at the basin. “You’re not here to shoot?”

“Not today.” Sebastian watched him splash warm water over his face and reach for the towel. “How long have you been back from Jamaica?”

“Not long,” said Oliphant, his attention seemingly all for the task of drying his hands.

“I understand you knew a man named Preston. Stanley Preston.”

Oliphant glanced over at him. “As it happens, I did. Why do you ask?”

“Someone cut off his head and used it to decorate a bridge near Five Fields.”

“So I had heard.”

“I’m told he was afraid of you. Why?”

“Who told you that?”

“Are you saying he wasn’t?”

Oliphant tossed the towel at the washstand and turned away to ease his coat up over his shoulders with the attendant’s help. “Some people frighten easily.” He adjusted his cuffs. “They say you came down from the hills in Portugal swearing to kill me on sight.” He pivoted to face Sebastian, his arms spread wide, his eyebrows lifted as if in inquiry-or challenge. “Change your mind?”

“Not exactly.”

The man’s handsome smile slipped ever so slightly, then broadened. “What do you have in mind? Pistols at dawn? Or a knife wielded in darkness from a fetid alley?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Three years ago, an innocent Portuguese nun was raped and tortured to death because of you, while thirty-two children and the simple, pious women who cared for them were put to the sword or burned alive. No English court will ever convict you for what you did to the convent of Santa Iria. But if you murdered Stanley Preston, I’m going to personally watch you hang for it.”

Then he turned and strode from the room, before the urge to kill the man with his bare hands overwhelmed him.

Hero arrived home from her early expedition to Covent Garden to find Devlin seated at his desk, fitting a new flint into his small, double-barreled pistol.

“The strangest thing happened at the market this morning,” she said, yanking off her yellow kid gloves as she walked into the library. “There was this man-” She broke off as Devlin looked up and she saw his face.

The room was filled with shadows, for the day had grown overcast and he had no need to kindle a candle to light his work. Yet even in the gloom, she could sense the taut, hard set of his features, see the lethal gleam in the strange yellow luminosity of his eyes. “What is it?” she said.

“Sinclair Oliphant is in London.”

She was suddenly, acutely aware of the ticking of the mantel clock, of the lean strength of his fingers as he worked on the gun. He had told her some of the events of that blood-soaked Portuguese spring. She knew of Oliphant’s betrayal and the hideous carnage that flowed from it. But she’d always suspected that Devlin hadn’t told her everything. That he was holding back some crucial component of the events of that day. And that what he hugged quietly to himself was the part that most lacerated his soul and drove him on a path to destruction.