C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

“What is it?” she asked, just as a team of black horses erupted from a narrow lane to their left, eyes wild, hooves flashing, nostrils flaring wide in the cold night. In the horses’ wake, a heavy, old-fashioned traveling coach careened from side to side, its coachman driving straight toward Kat’s delicate town carriage.

“What the hell?” swore Yates as their own coachman shouted in alarm. Horses squealed, the carriage lurching sharply as their driver hauled his team hard to the right. Kat had a tilted vision of tumbled gray tombstones and the rusty spikes topping the churchyard wall.

The carriage shuddered to a standstill.

“Are you all right?” asked Yates.

“Yes. But-”

The coachman’s startled cry cut through the night, followed by an ugly thump.

She said in a low, urgent voice, “Yates,” just as a man dressed in footmen’s livery and a powdered wig jerked open the carriage door, a blunderbuss pistol in one hand.

“What the devil?” thundered Yates.

The man grabbed Kat’s wrist and hauled her forward. “If you’re smart, you’ll stay out of this,” he warned Yates in an unexpectedly cultured voice.

“This is madness,” said Kat, falling heavily against him as he dragged her through the doorway to the pavement. The air was cold and damp against her face, the churchyard’s earthy scent of decay thick in her nostrils. “We have nothing of value for you to steal!”

He pressed the cold steel of his pistol’s muzzle against her temple and gave her a tight smile. “There’s only one thing I need from you.”

Panic thundered her heart, caught her breath in her tight throat as she heard the soft snick of the pistol’s hammer being pulled back. She lunged wildly against the hand on her arm, but his grip tightened cruelly, holding her fast.

She saw Yates rear up in the open carriage doorway, a small pistol in one hand. The night filled with the roar of flames and the acrid stench of burnt powder, and the chest of the man holding her dissolved in a warm, wet spray of blood.

He went down, hard.

“Mason!” shouted a second assailant, who’d been holding a gun to the head of Kat’s own wide-eyed footman.

“Yates! Look out!” cried Kat as the second assailant turned, leveled his double-barreled pistol on Yates, and fired.

“Yates!” she screamed.

Yates tumbled face-first to the pavement.

Arm outstretched, the assailant calmly cocked his pistol’s second barrel and turned the muzzle toward Kat.

Kat froze.

“No! Leave her,” shouted the heavy coach’s tall, dark-caped driver. “That’s Russell Yates you’ve just killed, you fool. You know our orders. Grab Mason and let’s get out of here.”

“Yates?” Kat went to crouch beside him. She was only dimly aware of the dark coachman whipping his horses, the old coach pulling away.

“Oh, Yates ,” she whispered, and gathered his bloody, broken body into her trembling arms.

An hour later, Kat was crossing the entry hall of her Cavendish Square house when a preemptory peal sounded at the front door.

She was expecting Paul Gibson, for she’d asked the surgeon to come examine her injured coachman. Instead, her butler opened the door to Charles, Lord Jarvis.

She froze, one hand on the newel post, her husband’s blood still soaking the bodice and skirt of her silk evening gown.

Jarvis carefully removed his mist-dampened hat, a faint smile touching his lips as he met her furious gaze. “I believe we need to talk. Don’t you agree?”

That evening, Hero attended a concert with her mother while Sebastian settled in the library with a glass of brandy and the English translation of The Key of Solomon. He was still at it some hours later when Jules Calhoun returned from St. Botolph-Aldgate.

“Discover anything?” Sebastian asked, thankfully setting aside the ancient grimoire.

“I did, actually,” said Calhoun. “It seems that in the immediate aftermath of the murder, Lambeth Street showed little interest in interviewing the residents of the area.”

“When Yates was in custody.”

“Yes. But constables began canvassing the neighborhood on Wednesday, asking all sorts of questions.”

“Interesting, given that Leigh-Jones was at the time still confidently insisting on Yates’s guilt.”

“Indeed, my lord. Yet it was Mr. Leigh-Jones himself who spoke to the corner greengrocer yesterday morning.”

“Not today?”

“No, my lord. Definitely yesterday.”

“So before Foy’s death. I wonder what-”

“Gov’nor!”

Sebastian broke off as Tom’s voice echoed through the house. They could hear the boy’s footsteps pounding across the entry’s marble floor. “Gov’nor!” The tiger burst into the room, eyes wide, chest heaving, mouth agape as he sucked in air.

“Well, what is it?” asked Sebastian.

“It’s Russell Yates! ’E’s dead .”

The ex-pirate lay beneath a sheet on a bed in his Cavendish Square house, his dark, too-long hair a stark contrast to the white linen pillow cover, his hands folded at his chest, his eyes closed, his features so serene that he might have been sleeping. But Sebastian knew death when he saw it.

Kat knelt beside the bed, her head bowed in prayer, the beads of a rosary slipping through her fingers. Sebastian paused in the doorway, aware of a flicker of surprise. He’d always known Kat was raised Catholic, but somehow he’d assumed she no longer practiced her faith. In that, he realized, he had erred.

She looked up then, made the sign of the cross, and rose to her feet.

He went to enfold her in his arms, and she came to him without hesitation and trembling with need. Her cheeks were stained with tears, and as she rested her head on his shoulder, a faint sob racked her body. For one long, suspended moment, he simply held her. Then she drew back, putting space between them.

He said, “Tell me what happened.”

She swiped a palm across one wet cheek. “We were on our way to the theater. Yates had insisted on riding with me. He never does that, but he was worried because of the attack in the market. We were just making the curve near St. Giles when an old traveling coach came charging out of an alley and forced my own carriage into the churchyard wall. There were two men dressed in livery, as well as the driver. But I could tell by their voices that none of them were what they seemed. The driver struck my coachman with a long staff, knocking him from the seat. Gibson says he’s concussed, but he should be all right.”

Sebastian knew a deep sense of disquiet. While some of the heaths surrounding the city could still be dangerous, it was unheard of for a carriage to be held up on the streets of London itself.

She drew a shaky breath. “One of the men dragged me out of the carriage. He was going to kill me. Only, Yates shot him. And so. .” Her voice cracked. She swallowed, but it was still a moment before she could continue. “And so one of the other men killed him. And then. . It was the strangest thing. Once Yates was dead, they let me go and drove away.”

“You think they were the same men who attacked you in Covent Garden Market?”

She shook her head. “No. These men might have been dressed as servants, but their voices were educated.” Her jaw hardened, her nostrils flaring with a quickly indrawn breath. “I think they were Jarvis’s men.”

“You recognized them?”

“No. But he came to see me. Here. Tonight.”

“Jarvis came here?”

She nodded. “Less than two hours after Yates was killed. He wanted to make certain that I had a perfect understanding of the situation that now exists between us.”