C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

Tyson’s clear gray eyes met Sebastian’s. His hair was chestnut brown, his cheeks strong boned, his jaw square and marked by a rakish scar across his chin that enhanced rather than detracted from his rugged good looks.

“The lieutenant and I have met,” said Sebastian evenly.

“Excellent, excellent,” said Hope, beaming and utterly oblivious to the powerful undercurrents of animosity that crackled between the two men.

Tyson’s companion-considerably younger and fairer-took off his hat and shook Sebastian’s hand with boyish enthusiasm. From the looks of things, Louisa’s Irish cousin couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-two, with a head of soft golden curls, merry blue eyes, and the face of an angel. “Devlin?” said Blair Beresford. “Oh, by Jove. This is an honor, my lord, an honor indeed. Did you know Matt in the Peninsula, then?” He glanced laughingly at his friend. “And here Matt never told me.”

“Our acquaintance was. . brief,” said Tyson, a muscle bunching along his powerful jaw.

Sebastian was aware of Tom, waiting with the curricle below, his slight form motionless as he stood at the grays’ heads, his face a mask as his gaze traveled from one man to the other.

“Gentlemen,” said Sebastian, tipping his hat.

Without looking back, he descended the stairs to vault up to the curricle’s high seat and gather his reins. “Let ’em go,” he told Tom.

The grays sprang forward, the boy scrambling to take his perch at the rear of the carriage. “You know that cove from somewhere?” Tom asked as Sebastian sent the grays dashing up the street at a shocking pace. “The big one, I mean.”

“Spain. He was with the 114th Foot, although from the looks of things, he’s sold out.”

“’Peared to me ’e weren’t exactly pleased to see you,” observed Tom. “In fact, I’d say ’e weren’t weery pleased to see you atall.”

“Perhaps that’s because the last time he saw me, I was sitting on his court-martial board.”

“What ’ad ’e done?”

“According to the decision of my fellow officers, nothing. He was found innocent. But he was accused of robbing and killing a young Spanish woman and her two children.”

He’d been avoiding it all day. But the time had come, Sebastian knew, to visit the Tower Hill surgery of his old friend Paul Gibson.

Once a regimental surgeon with the Twenty-fifth Light Dragoons, Gibson had learned many of the secrets of life and death from his close observation of the countless shattered, slashed, burned, and maimed bodies strewn across the world’s battlefields. Then a French cannonball took off the lower half of one of his own legs, leaving him racked by phantom pains and with a weakness for the sweet relief to be found in an elixir of poppies. He now divided his time between sharing his knowledge of anatomy at the teaching hospitals of St. Thomas’s and St. Bartholomew’s, and tending his own small surgery near the looming bastions of the Tower of London.

Leaving the curricle in Tom’s care, Sebastian cut through the narrow passage that ran alongside the surgeon’s ancient stone house to the small outbuilding at the base of the unkempt yard where Gibson performed his autopsies. It was here that he also practiced surreptitious dissections on bodies filched from London’s churchyards by gangs of unsavory characters known as resurrection men. By law, the dissection of any human corpse except that of an executed felon was forbidden, which meant that if a surgeon wanted to perfect a new technique or further expand his understanding of human anatomy or physiology, he had little choice but to trade with the body snatchers.

Sebastian was aware of thunder rumbling in the distance and a patter of scattered raindrops as he followed the beaten path through the rank grass. The air filled with the smell of damp earth and death. Gibson had left the outbuilding’s door open; through it, Sebastian could see the pale body of a man stretched out on the surgeon’s granite slab. It was Rhys Wilkinson, and from the looks of things, Gibson was only getting started.

“There you are, me lad,” said Gibson, looking up with a grin as Sebastian paused in the doorway.

“Find anything?” he asked, careful not to look too closely at what Gibson was doing to the cadaver before him. Sebastian had spent six years fighting the King’s wars from Italy to Spain to the West Indies; he had seen death in all its ugliest, most heartbreaking and stomach-churning manifestations. He had even killed men himself, more times than he cared to remember. But none of that had left him with Gibson’s calm insouciance when it came to viewing the dissected, mangled, or decomposing bodies of the dead. . Particularly when the body belonged to someone he’d called friend.

“We-ell,” said Gibson, drawing out the word into two syllables, “I’ve only just begun, I’m afraid. Had a coroner’s inquest that lasted far longer than it ought to have. About all I can tell you at this point is the liver and spleen are enlarged. But then, that’s typical for someone with Walcheren fever.”

“He told me just a few weeks ago that he thought he was getting over the worst of it.”

“No one ever really gets over Walcheren fever, I’m afraid,” said Gibson. He was a few years older than Sebastian, in his early thirties now. But chronic pain had etched deep the fan of laugh lines beside his green eyes, touched the temples of his dark hair with silver, and left him thin and wiry. “I’m not saying for certain that’s what killed him, mind you. I’ve a few things to look at yet.” He paused. “How’s Annie taking it?”

“Badly.”

Gibson shook his head. “Poor girl. She’s been through so much.”

“She’s game,” said Sebastian.

“Aye, that she is. But she was looking rather worn down last I saw her.”

“Things have been difficult for them, what with Wilkinson invalided out and too ill to hold a position. I offered to help, but she would have none of it.”

“I’m not surprised. She was always a proud woman.” Gibson limped out from behind the slab, his peg leg tapping on the uneven paving. “I take it you’ve heard about Russell Yates?”

“I have. You wouldn’t by chance know who’s doing Daniel Eisler’s postmortem?”

Gibson smiled. “I thought you might be interested, so I asked around. Seems there wasn’t one. I gather the magistrate involved doesn’t hold with such outlandish modern practices. I did, however, manage to speak to a colleague of mine-a Dr. William Fenning-who was called to confirm the man’s death at the scene. He said Eisler had been shot at close quarters in the chest. Death was likely virtually instantaneous.”

“Did he notice anything else?”

“You mean, at the house?” Gibson shook his head. “I’m afraid not. He was brought in to view the body; he gave his opinion and left. I gather he was late for a dinner party.”

The two men went to stand outside, their backs to the close room and its grisly contents, the damp wind clean and cool in their faces. Sebastian said, “Do you remember Matt Tyson?”

Gibson looked over at him. “You mean the lieutenant from the 114th Foot who was court-martialed after Talavera?”

“That’s the one. I ran into him just now. From the looks of things, he’s sold out.”

“I’m not surprised. He might have been acquitted, but those kinds of accusations leave an opprobrium that lingers.”

“Justifiably, in his case,” said Sebastian dryly.

Gibson shook his head. “I’ve never really believed in evil-at least, not as something with a finite existence outside ourselves. But when I run across someone like Tyson, it makes me wonder if the good nuns might not have been right after all.”