C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

“Now, how would I know? The man was a sergeant-not exactly one of my intimates.”

“Unlike Beresford?”

Tyson looked over at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Did you know Eisler was in the habit of acquiring information about people and then using it against them?”

Tyson turned to walk toward the entrance. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Are you?”

Sebastian fell into step beside him. “It occurs to me that Eisler could have been playing his tricks on Blair Beresford-threatening to tell Hope about his gambling losses.”

Tyson looked over at him. “What makes you think Beresford has gambling debts?”

“He told me himself.”

“Beresford isn’t exactly what you’d consider a ripe target for blackmail. He has no money-as Eisler himself obviously knew all too well.”

“To my knowledge, Eisler’s form of blackmail was more subtle than your normal variety of extortion.”

Something flickered across Tyson’s face, then was gone. “Perhaps. But I can’t imagine what Beresford has that might have interested Eisler. He’s the younger son of a small Irish landowner, in London for a few months.”

“Seems an unusual friend for someone who spent ten years fighting from India to Spain.”

Tyson drew up on the flagway before the shooting gallery. The golden September sunlight fell hard across his face, accentuating the harsh lines and deep grooves dug there by a decade of forced marches and indifferent rations and overexposure to a fierce tropical sun. “What are you suggesting? That I ought to be spending my days at the Fox and Hound, knocking back tankards of stout and reminiscing with my fellow officers about the good old days? I’m twenty-six, not seventy-six. Blair Beresford is quick-witted and endlessly amusing. He’s also a brilliant poet. He took the Newdigate Prize at Oxford for one of his poems. Did you know?”

“No.”

“There is much that you do not know.” Tyson squinted up at the sun. “And now you really must excuse me. I’ve an appointment with my tailor.”

Sebastian watched the lieutenant turn to saunter toward Bond Street, but stopped him by saying, “How did you happen to meet Beresford, anyway?”

Tyson pivoted slowly to face him again, his dark eyes narrowing with a tight smile that could have meant anything. “We met through Yates.”

Then he touched his hand to his hat and walked on.

Since her marriage to Russell Yates, Kat Boleyn had lived in a sprawling town house on Cavendish Square. It was a fashionable address favored by the nobility and wealthy merchants and bankers, all of whom no doubt looked upon their notorious new neighbors with scandalized horror. Kat might have been the most acclaimed actress on the London stage, but she was still an actress. And although it was not well-known, she’d once survived as a homeless, abused child on the streets of London by selling the only the thing of value she possessed: herself.

It was a time she rarely spoke of. But Sebastian had seen the way she looked at the young, ragged girls who haunted the back alleys of Covent Garden. He knew only too well the mark those days had left upon her. He’d tried to ease the damage done to her by that desperate time, by the English soldiers who’d raped and killed her mother, by her aunt’s lecherous husband. But he knew he’d never really succeeded. And he found himself pondering why he was remembering these things now, as he mounted the steps to her front door. For Kat was a woman who asked for neither pity nor solace, but who forged her own victories. .

And her own revenge.

She was crossing the vast marbled entry hall when her staid butler opened the door to Sebastian. He saw the breath of surprise that shadowed her face at the sight of him, for she had been married a year and yet this was the first time he had ever come here, to the house she shared with Yates.

“Devlin,” she said, taking both his hands to draw him into a nearby salon. “What is it? Have you discovered something?”

She wore a simple gown of white figured muslin sashed in primrose, with a delicate strand of pearls threaded through the dark, auburn-shot fall of her curls, and he held her fingers just a shade too long before squeezing them and letting her go. “Nothing that makes any sense yet. But I don’t like the way Yates’s name keeps coming up the more I look into things.”

She held his gaze squarely, her eyes deep and vividly blue and so much like those of the man who was her father and not his that it still hurt, just to look at her.

She said, “He didn’t do it, Sebastian.”

“Maybe he didn’t. But I’m beginning to suspect he knows far more about what is going on than he would have me believe.” He drew her over to sit beside him on a sofa near the window. “Are you familiar with a man named Blair Beresford?”

Kat Boleyn might never receive invitations to London’s most exclusive balls and parties, but she still socialized with Yates’s easygoing male friends and acted as hostess at his dinners. She thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t believe so. Why? Who is he?”

“A beautiful, curly-headed, blue-eyed Irish poet only lately down from Oxford.”

She gave a soft laugh. “In general, Yates has very little patience with poets-especially those just down from Oxford.”

“What about an army lieutenant named Matt Tyson? Mid-twenties. Dark. Also good-looking, although not in Beresford’s boyish way. Has a rather rakish scar on his chin.”

“Him I do know. Yates finds him amusing.”

Amusing. It was the same word Tyson had used to describe Beresford. “But you don’t like him?” said Sebastian.

Her smile faded. “He’s never been anything except charming and gracious to me. But. .”

“But?”

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t ever want to turn my back on him-metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“Do you know if he”-Sebastian hesitated, struggling for a way to put his question into words-“has the same inclinations as Yates?”

She understood what he meant. “I don’t know. But I can ask.” She tipped her head to one side, her gaze on his face, and he wondered what she saw there. She was always far too good at knowing what he was thinking. “Why did you come here to me, Devlin? Why not ask Yates directly?”

“Because I’m not convinced he is being as honest with me as he could be.”

She pushed up from the sofa and went to fiddle with the heavy satin drapes at the window overlooking the square.

“What?” he asked, watching her.

She exhaled a long breath. “To be frank, I’m not certain he’s being exactly honest with me either.”

“Why? Why would he lie?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” But her gaze slid from his in a way he did not like.

He said, “Do you know anything about a large blue diamond whose sale Eisler was handling? A diamond that may once have formed part of the French Crown Jewels?”

He watched her carefully and saw no trace of anything in her face other than puzzlement and surprise, followed swiftly by what looked very much like fear.

But then, he reminded himself, it would never do to forget that Kat was an actress. A very good one. And it struck him as ironic and troubling that he found himself doubting both of the women in his life-although for vastly different reasons.

She said, “What are you suggesting? That the French are somehow involved in Eisler’s murder?”

“You know about Napoleon’s quest to recover the French Crown Jewels?”

“Yes.”

A simple answer that told him she probably knew more than he did. Once, she had worked for the French, passing secrets to Napoleon’s agents in an effort to weaken England and free Ireland. She claimed she’d severed that relationship long ago. But Sebastian suspected she still had contacts with her old confederates-as did Yates.